Free Printable Educational Board Games, Card Games

Card games and board games are excellent teaching tools. Card games can be created to teach content area and subject matter in lesson plans Card games help students memorize information. Here are free printable educational card games, playing cards, flashcards, dominoes and Memory games to use as lesson plans. 

The Kidz Page has free printable educational card games, word games, flashcards, math games, sudoku games and lots of other educational learning games. They are brightly colored, cheerful games. Activity Village has free printable educational cards games, deck of cards for learning games, Memory games and more. 

Free Printable Math Manipulatives, Hands-on Math Tools, Activities

The best way to teach math is with real-life applications. The best way to explain math concepts is with hands-on materials that are multi-sensory. These tools are called math manipulatives because kids can touch and interact with them. They're not just paper and pencil activities or textbook lessons. Math manipulatives include real or play money (for market math), clocks for telling time, fraction bars, pattern blocks, parquetry blocks, peg boards, base ten blocks, Unifix cubes and Cuisinaire Rods. Here are websites with free printable math manipulatives for homemade materials.

Mason has a webpage with dozens of links for free printable math manipulatives, Print pattern blocks, geometry shapes, Base Ten blocks, color tiles, XY blocks and fraction bars. These tools are commonly used in preschool, kindergarten and special needs classrooms, but should be used in all grades to teach geometry, algebra and other maths.

Sparkle Box from the United Kingdom is jam-packed with free math manipulatives and printables. There are free printable PDFs of clock activities for telling time, fraction pies and bars, coins and play money for learning about money math and many free printable math games. Math games include spinners, dice, game board, pieces and accessories, all free printable cut-out activities.

Making Learning Fun has hundreds of free printable math games and manipulatives. This website is organized according to theme, such as Cats, Apples or different children's literature books. Each theme or topic has free printable math lessons, crafts, cut and paste, puzzles and more.

Jimmie's Collage is a neat homeschool blog with gobs of mom-teacher-made math manipulatives to print. Use in the classroom or at home.

Free Printable File Folder Games

 March is National Reading Month and just in time, here's a great lesson plan to teach reading with file folder games. Students can learn just about any subject using file folder games to reinforce content and practice skills. Here are free printable file folders games online. Besides reading, teach math, reading, spelling, grammar, phonics, science, social studies and more. Print games for all ages and ability levels: preschool, kindergarten, elementary, special needs, middle school. Use for homeschool, too.

File Folder Fun has over 100 free printable file folder games in content areas across the curriculum. Search by age, grade level, theme and subject. File folder themes include animals, foods, flowers, weather, ocean life, circus. Themes teach math, reading, science, social studies, phonics, spelling, math, ELA (English Language Arts) history, music and other preschool and elementary school subjects. Click the games you want. The click "download." And voila, a screen appears with game background, pieces, cards, all materials you need, free.

File Folder Farm has gobs of free printable file folder games for math, English, reading, writing, spelling, science, social studies and more. Games can be used with varied ages. Click the game you want. The print, cut out and and assemble. Or better still, print in black and white. Have students color, cut and paste and assemble. You get two activities--craft, lesson plan and game--all in one!

Cindy's Autistic Support has free printable math file folder games. Use to teach counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division file folder games. You can make individual games for each math fact (times table) family.

To make file folder games:

Print game board and glue to inside of file folder. Write instructions on outside. Laminate or cover with contact paper. Make a spinner by drawing a circle. Divide like a pie. Label segments with game advancement options. Place paperclip on paper fastener (brad). Poke fastener through center of circle. Spin paper clip.

Store game cards or pieces in zippered plastic bag or envelope stapled to folder. File folder games store upright in filing cabinet or drawer. Get extra craft mileage from free printable file folder games by assigning students make them.

Free Printable Handwriting, Penmanship and Cursive Writing Worksheets

One of the skils that has fallen to the wayside with computers is penmanship. Here are free printable handwriting worksheets, manuscript writing practice pages and cursive penmanship worksheets. Use free printable manuscript (printing letters) and cursive writing worksheets.

There are different methods and styles for teaching penmanship. Zaner-Bloser style is the older handwriting style in which printed letters are written vertically with no slant. D'Nnealian manuscript (printed letters) are written at a slant with more rounding of letters. 

Writing Wizard has many free printable handwriting worksheets and writing practice pages for manuscript (print) and cursive writing practice pages. There are upper and lower case letters. You can print pages with single letters to practice. Kids Zone has really nice free printable handwriting worksheets and writing practice pages. The letters are grouped according the movements needed to write them. For example, there are the "rockin" round' letters and the "up the slide letters." This site is very kid-friendly. There are gobs more free printable writing and reading lessons on printing, tracing, alphabet, Dolce sight words, phonics, poetry and more.

Handwriting for Kids has a collection of free printable penmanship writing practice pages and handwriting worksheets. Look for cursive writing practice pages on this site.. Each of the cursive handwriting worksheets has a coloring picture on it. Children love to color the pictures when they have finished their handwriting practice. Make the coloring page a reward. When they have shown you their five best examples of the letter, they get to color the pictures.

Handwriting may be a lost art, but it will always be needed to some extent. Use these free printable handwriting practice pages as lesson plans, in homeschool or tutoring. 

Free printable lesson plans on Global Awareness and Activism Activities

In industrialized 'first world' countries, we live in consumer-driven, insular communities. We have little exposure to and less contact with those living in poverty. Global issues don't impact us. We consume grotesque quantities of natural resources. We use goods wantonly, we burn vast amounts of fossil fuel every second. We let good clean water run down the drain endlessly. We turn fertile land in landfills which we cram with  waste plastic, paper, yard waste, glass, metal. 

Here are links to websites that are all about raising awareness, student and adult alike. These online resources have free printable lesson plans on empathy, volunteering, reducing carbon footprint, activism. Ironically, school paper waste is a huge part of pollution. So lets reduce this by printing responsibly and using online resources.  

The Hunger Site and partner sites provide free printable global awareness resources for teachers and homeschoolers. Get free printable ecology and environment lesson plans to teach students about the dangers of global warming, rainforest exploitation, expansionism, imperialism, urban sprawl, pollution, deforestation, water shortage, poverty and hunger.

Here are more free printable ecology and environment lesson plans help students explore world hunger, poverty, disease and famine from a social justice perspective. Smithsonian Education offers free printable conservation, ecology and environment activities on pollution, world poverty, famine and disease. Why Hunger has free activities on natural resources, world hunger, distribution of wealth and poverty.

Feeding Minds helps teachers and students explore world hunger and poverty inside out and provides many free printable educational resources. Rain-tree has free printable rainforest, ecology and environment activities. Students learn about deforestation, wildlife preservation, pollution, depletion of natural resources and more. Eduweb offers students online games and free printable resources to explore the Amazon rainforest and the environment.

Free Printable Preschool Cut and Paste Craft Activities

Looking for fun summer reading activities for emergent readers? Here's a site with Fisher-Price coloring pages for preschool. This site  has hundreds of free printable coloring pages based on Fisher-Price and Mattel toys: Imaginext, Little People, Rescue Heroes, Power Wheels, Thomas and Friends. Scroll down for free printable Disney coloring pages too.