Geography puzzles and quizzes for teachers

Jigsaw Earth is a free website of jigsaw puzzles made from photos of real places, with geography quizzes on flags, maps, capitals and famous sites. It runs in any web browser – on Chromebooks, laptops, tablets and interactive whiteboards – with nothing to install and no student accounts. Here are some ways to use it in class.

A country or region unit

Every country has its own page with a short introduction and puzzles of its best-known places. Share the page with your class – for example Colombia, Japan, Egypt or Italy – and let each student choose a place, put it together and find out what it shows. Continent pages such as South America list all the countries we cover, and Explore shows them on a world map.

Quick quizzes to start or end a lesson

Flags, capitals, map and country shapes quizzes, for the whole world or one continent at a time – for example the flags of South America.
Where is this? and Guess the Landmark, with photos of real places.
The 50 US states and Canada’s provinces and territories on the map, with their capitals and shapes.
The Planet Earth Quiz on oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, volcanoes, deserts, waterfalls, islands, peninsulas and straits.
The Daily Geography Quiz: five new questions every day, the same for everyone – a ready-made warm-up.

The quizzes end with a score, and every quiz and continent has its own medal: 5 out of 10 for bronze, 7 for silver and 9 for gold. Students can try again to beat their own result.

History topics

Some quizzes and travel guides go with history lessons: the Ancient Egypt Quiz, the Greek Mythology Quiz, the Viking Quiz and the Seven Wonders Quiz, together with guides such as the Seven Wonders of the World and Viking sites to visit.

Spanish and Russian classes

The whole site is also in Spanish and Russian: the same puzzles, quizzes and country pages, with the descriptions translated. Students learning either language can play a geography quiz in it. The language menu is at the top of every page.

Tips for the lesson

Choose a smaller puzzle. Puzzles open with 35 pieces, or 20 on a Chromebook. For a short activity, choose 12 or 20 pieces from the Play As button under the puzzle; the browser remembers the choice for the next puzzle. You can also share a link that opens at that size: add ?cols=4&rows=3 (12 pieces) or ?cols=5&rows=4 (20 pieces) to the end of the puzzle’s address.
Play together on the board. On an interactive whiteboard, students can come up and place pieces in turn. In Guess the place the name of the place stays hidden until the last piece is in, so the class can discuss where it might be while they build it.
A daily routine. Where on Earth? gives one mystery photo a day to put together and then find on the map.
For early finishers. Puzzle journeys take students around the world one puzzle at a time: each stop they finish unlocks the next.
On your class website. Any puzzle can be shown on a class page or a Google Site: open Share on the puzzle and choose Embed on your site. The embedded puzzle shows only the game, without ads.

Accounts, privacy and ads

Students don’t need an account or an email address to play. Finished puzzles, quiz medals and passport stamps are kept in the browser on each device. The site is free because some pages show advertising; puzzles embedded on your own site show none. The details are in our Privacy Policy.

Ideas and requests

Teaching a country or topic we don’t cover yet? Tell us on the Contact page. We add new places regularly, and suggestions from teachers help us choose them.