Activity Book Maker

What can go in a book

Each row is one kind of page, under the name the Puzzle menu gives it, and the name links to the maker that makes the same puzzle one sheet at a time, with more settings than a book offers. The themes are the choices on that kind’s own theme menu, and the last column says whether the kind has an answer page at the back of the book.

What you get

One PDF containing the whole book: a title page if you leave it switched on, then the activities in reading order, then every answer page gathered at the back. Whenever the book has answer pages, every activity with an answer page is numbered and the answer page carries the same number, so nothing has to be matched up by guesswork.

The puzzles come from the same generators the individual makers use, and each page is laid out by the same page builder, so a page here and the same puzzle from its own maker cannot drift apart. What this page adds is everything between the pages: the order they come in, the sizes and levels that change from one page to the next within a section, and the numbers that tie each puzzle to its answer page.

How it differs from making sheets one at a time

Downloading forty sheets from five different tools gives you forty files, all called something similar, in no particular order, with the answer keys scattered among them. Most of the work in making a book is the arranging, not the puzzles.

Ordering is the part worth having done for you. Set the sections to mix and they take turns in the order listed, with never more than two pages of one kind of puzzle in a row while a section of another kind still has pages to give, so a section much larger than the rest finishes as a run at the end. Bingo sections sit out the turns: each one prints whole after the puzzles, its call list first and then its cards. Set them to keep each together and every section prints as one block, which is what you want when the pages are being handed out as a set rather than bound.

Difficulty rotates unless you pin it. Left on easy to hard, word searches, word scrambles, criss-crosses, mazes, word mazes, sudoku and the two chart practice kinds cycle easy, medium, hard and back to easy within each section, so nine mazes hold three of each level rather than climbing once from first page to last. Math pages have no difficulty setting and rotate through addition, subtraction, times tables, division and fractions instead, unless the section is set to just one of them. A crossword has no level either, since each clue bank is written for one age range, and connect the dots climbs from fewest dots to most on its own.

Choosing what goes in

Add a section for each kind of page you want: a puzzle, a theme, how many pages, and a difficulty where the kind has one, or an operation for math practice. Sections can be reordered, edited or removed afterwards, and the page count updates as you go.

Themes can be mixed in one book. Six Halloween mazes and four Christmas word searches is a perfectly ordinary request here, and each section keeps its own theme's artwork, so the Halloween pages wear Halloween frames and the Christmas pages do not. Connect the dots and tracing pages print without a frame whatever the setting, because their drawings are laid out for the whole page.

Three kinds have menus of their own, because a word list cannot make their pages. A crossword needs a clue for every answer, so it draws on seven banks of clues, each written for the ages it names; connect the dots needs a picture, so it offers the nine themes that have one, two of them with a second picture; and tracing offers eight sets of lines and shapes, each one of the tracing maker’s own ready-made sheets.

All but one of the word lists has forty words, the shortest has twenty-five, and each page takes the next stretch of the list: twelve words for a word scramble, up to eighteen for a plain word search. Ten scrambles therefore use ten different sets rather than the same twelve ten times over, but on a forty-word theme the sets start to overlap from the fourth scramble, and the eleventh repeats the first one’s words exactly.

Bingo works differently from the rest: the number you choose is cards, not pages, and the section opens with a call list of every word in the theme, then prints one five by five card per page with a free center. A card needs twenty-four words, and every theme on the menu has at least twenty-five.

Printing it

The file is US Letter, portrait, with margins that suit a home or school printer. Print it single sided to hand pages out, or double sided and staple down the left edge for something closer to a book.

The answer pages are deliberately printed without frames. Every activity except bingo and tracing gets exactly one, so a book without either has as many answer pages as activities, and a full page of line art on a sheet nobody looks at twice is a noticeable amount of ink for nothing. Turn answers off and they are never generated.

Everything here is free to print, as many copies as you need, for one child or a whole school, and printed copies can be shared with parents, colleagues or students. Use is not limited to home and school either: a tutoring session, a library, a nursing home or a club is covered too.