Explorable Explanations by ideonexus

Welcome! Here you will find a growing collection of javascript apps I have built or built-upon to help explain concepts and tutor my two boys in math and literacy. If you like this collection, please fork it and make it your own! Here are a few principles I try to maintain with each new app I add to the collection:

I try to keep them mobile-friendly as young children can interact with touch-screens easier than with a mouse and keyboard.
I put all of the main javascript, css, and html into the index.html file so that new and younger programmers can see everything in one place.
With a few exceptions, all of these are capable of loading into a browser from the local drive. This way new and budding hackers don't need to mess with setting up web servers or needing an internet connection to run them and can develop in a text editor.
As of 2026, I have started using claude.ai to rapidly prototype and produce applications that I previously did not have the time or skill to construct. These are marked with a "(claude.ai)" to identify them.

Word Families

JavaScript Word Families flashcard page for teaching my kids.

Sight Words Memory Game

The Dolche Words as a memory game. Goes from Pre-K to Third Grade. Extended from LOLCatz Memory Game by jamesbarnett and Dolch Site Words from Jill Perkins' Workbook.

n-Back Spelling Game

Type the word that the application spells for you and level up.

Compound Word Match Game

Build compound words from a random selection of over 1,000 words. Extended from LOLCatz Memory Game by jamesbarnett.

Word Categories Hunt Game

Find all the words that match the category.

Alphabet Race

JavaScript alphabet typing game. Teaches children both alphabetical order and orients them as to where letters are on the keyboard.

Sight Words Typing Game

Combining the Alphabet Race Typing game with the Sight Words Memory Game.

Alphabetical Order Sort

Sort the word family into alphabetical order by dragging-and-dropping the words into the right places.

Word Search

The Dolche Words as a wordsearch game. Goes from Pre-K to Third Grade. Credit to wordfind.js by bunkat and Dolch Site Words from Jill Perkins' Workbook.

One-Letter Word-Changer

Change one letter to create new words. For teaching phonetics. Word Groups from Montessori Mom Phonetic Word List.

One-Word Sentence-Changer

Change one word to create a new sentence. Student gets confidence reading the same words and learns new words with pictures to help. BY-NC-SA Creative Commons pictures by SEN Teacher.

Alphabet Flashcards

JavaScript alphabet flashcard page for teaching my kids. Credit to Corey Menscher.

Creative Commons Book Reader

Interface for reading books to children. Allows stepping through by page, sentence, and word. Also allows click-highlighting words to read them aloud. Creative Commons books by Brothers Whim and Pratham Books (Pratham Scribd).

Parts of Speech Game

Similar to Mad Libs, a simple application that prompts for various kinds of words and then inserts them into classic public domain texts.

Shakespearean Insult Generator

Based on the classic meme, generates a Shakespearean insult. Adapted from matthewtole ShakespeareaInsult.js and Shakespeare Insult Kit.

Typing Quest

A really fun and mind-bending typing game. Cleaned up and refactored to support different skill levels easy enough a toddler can hunt-and-peck to play. Credit to Miłosz Kośmider with input from Adam Bielinski.

Speechboard

Simulates the speechboard used by Stephen Hawking. Credit to Cranky's Alphabet Board.

Number Line

Numberline Navigator page for teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Credit to user372551.

Pattern Blocks

A javascript version of pattern blocks built with Fabric JS.

Shape Hunt Cardinality Game

Has children look for both the correct shape and number of shapes. Used to work on n-back skills.

Hundred Board Guessing Game

Click on the odds, evens, or factors. Also a Wolf-Fence Number guessing game, with the computer giving greater-than/less-than hints.

Wingding Cardinality Visualizer

To help children visualize sets of numbers.

Base-10 Block Game

For teaching children base-10 number placement values, which are the foundation of our mathematics.

Money Counting Game

For familiarizing children with American currency and counting by dollars and cents.

Coordinate Finder / Multiplication Table Primer

Made this when my son wanted to play Battleship but was having trouble understanding X and Y coordinates. Updated to serve as a Multiplication table primer when x and y are both numeric.

Equivalency Hunt Game

Find all of the equations that produce a random number.

Equivalency Match Game

Match equivalent equations.

24

Find the sequence of operations that produces the number 24 from the four given numbers. Click "I Give Up" if you think there is no solution to see if the game can find any.

Operations Maze Game

From the top-left square, navigate the grid of operations to find the sequence that will get the max score. Many configuration options and navigable with keyboard arrows.

Zeckendorf's Theorem

Without using numbers neighboring one another, find the unique combination of numbers from the Fibonacci set that will sum to the target number.

Prime Factor Tree Generator

Slightly tweaked from original code by William Blanchette. Takes any number and breaks it down into a tree of its prime factors.

Fraction Visualizer

Built on the idea of fraction blocks as a manipulative. Represents fractions visually, as percentage, decimal, and fraction.

Vector Racer

The graph-paper game Racetrack. Good for teaching the concepts of velocity and acceleration; this game can only be mastered with mathematics.

Shut the Box Infinite

Classic game of rolling dice and using the result to knock out numbers. This version allows the player to add rows or increase/decrease the number range to play with probability. Credit to Mr. Polywhirl for the dice faces.

Magic Square Tic Tac Toe

An isomorph of tic tac toe where the first player to get three numbers adding up to 15 wins. Try turning off the grid for a harder challenge. Comes with an unbeatable AI and the option to change the target number.

Puzzle-Piece Arithmetic

My youngest loves puzzles, so this interface for adding numbers really engages him. Credit to Tim Samoff for the CSS and Thomas and Friends Number Game for the concept.

Number Types

Generate products from random numbers and then try to categorize the products by type.

Fractal Explorer

For exploring binary trees, dragon curves, Mandelbrot, and Julia sets. Credit to CodePlayer, britseyeview, FB36, and evangambit.

N-Back Simon Says

Simon Says exercises memory. Added a number-only version where the player must memorize increasing-length strings of numbers. Built on Javascript Simon by Kelly King.

Number Mandala Generator

Generates a number mandala for exploring primes and factors. Credit to Joey Grether for the idea.

Maze Navigator

Written by GoshDarnGames. Updated to animate the rendering of the maze and added a "Programmable" variant where you can input a set of moves and run them.

Spirograph (claude.ai)

Simulation of a pen-and-paper spirograph where kids would take different sized gears and run them in circles with differently-colored pens to discover patterns.

Binary Counting Machine

A set of processes that step through counting in binary.

The Boolean iChing

Execute boolean transformations on iChing concepts to find their relationships.

Conway's Game of Life (claude.ai)

A world of blocks where simple rules can produce complex and unexpected results. Learn more about it here.

Mastermind

Reproduction of the board game where you try to guess the color sequence, getting hints about what you have correct with each experiment.

Color Matcher

Add red, green, blue values in hexadecimal until you match the background color. Inspired by What the Color by Lea Verou.

Days of the Week Carousel

Carousel of the days of the week with the planets for which they are named.

Daisyworld

A javascript Daisyworld Simulation that starts with Earth values and allows you to adjust them, seeing how daisy populations shift to change the albedo of the planet to maintain a habitable temperature. Credit to Ginger Booth, Irigi, AyexeM, and HowToDevCode.

Kaleidostrobe

Wrote this after seeing how strobelights affect the appearance of fans rotating. Add shapes to the canvas and adjust their rotation rates to create different kaleidoscopic effects.

Taxonomy Quest (Claude.ai)

Beat your own score game. Given a species, identify its Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Subfamily, and Genus.

Gotcha!

Find the AI before it finds you by balancing evasion, reconnaissance, and attacking. Based on the game Gotcha! described in Simulating War by Philip Sabin. Credit to web-tiki for the hexagons CSS.

Twist-Tac-Toe

Variation on tic-tac-toe, "Chung Toi." Players get three tiles and must move those tiles to get three-in-a-row using the directional arrows drawn on them. Includes three levels of AI.

Twist-Tac-Toe (claude.ai)

Had claude.ai fix the min-max AI in my version of this game as it wasn't working as well as I'd hoped. Claude also created a very clean neon interface for the game as well.

Dice Challenge

The game Button Men or Sailor Moon Crystal: Dice Challenge, where players roll dice and then take turns spending dice to capture an opponent's die. Player scores are the sum of all dice-sides captured plus one-half the sum of all dice-sides not lost.

WOW! An RPG of Really Large Numbers

Using a very simple text-based RPG engine, I built this very simple game under direction from my kids. Using this simple framework you can also adapt this example to make your own games. Do enjoy this brief adventure!

Dungeon Labyrinth (Claude.ai)

Reskin of bobwhitley implementation of the Dungeons & Dragons™ Computer Labyrinth Game Simulator a 1980 electronic game that relied entirely on electronic sounds to communicate the game state to the player.

Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe (Claude.ai)

A variant of tic-tac-toe with nine tic-tac-toe boards forming a larger board. When you place your mark on the smaller board, your opponent must place a mark on the coresponding board in the larger game. Win three games orthogonally or diagonally to win the game.