Free printable spring coloring pages, Easter and life science lesson plans

 March 20-22 marks the vernal equinox, the first day of spring in many countries. For those of locked in ice and snow and cold, this date can't come too early. Many have had a long winter and are pretty happy to hear those cheery little birds singing and see tiny crocuses bravely trying to poke their lavender heads up through the snow. How about some free spring coloring pages, Easter holiday activities and spring crafts to occupy those children who are sick of winter and school? 

Coloring Book Fun free printable spring coloring pages are simple enough for the not yet seasoned colorers, and yet offer more challenging pictures for veteran colorers. This site has a huge stock of free printable spring coloring pages and spring crafts based on seasons, weather, Easter holiday activities, topics, Bible based pictures, multi-cultural and animals. You can find just about any cartoon character from G.I.Joe to Barbie to Pokemon to Rug-rats to Rainbow Brite to Dragon Ball Z to Dora, plus all your Disney favorites.

DL-TK provides all sorts of free printable spring coloring pages, seasonal spring crafts, lesson plans, puzzles, crafts, projects, scissor practice, sequencing practice, music, song sheets, stories, spring crafts and Easter holiday activities. DLTK has all kinds of preschool activities that will reinforce prereading, letter and number recognition, fine motor practice, telling time, tying shoes, counting, tracing and other skill builders based around a theme. You will find printables for baby animals, new life, butterflies and other insects, plants, flowers, rain, and more. 

Check out these really cute Easter holiday coloring pages from Print Activities. This site
has a really large data bank of banner and ad-free printables with educational themes, There's no sign up or registration, very few if any pop-ups and easy one click printing. I found many styles of cross-word puzzles, calendars, tracing, mazes, word scrambles, word sorts, connect the dots, connect the dot using math problems, Sudoku, fill in the blanks, color by numbers, color by math (students complete math problems and complete a code to color pictures. All these spring crafts and puzzles are themed on seasons, but you can find other topics with themed puzzles: Easter holiday activities, seasons, animals, It may take a moment to load, but it is worth it

Free Printable Geology Lesson Plans

Earth science is a fascinating subject. To help you teach earth science, either in public school or in homeschool, here are free printable geology lesson plans and earth science worksheets. Look for charts, graphs, maps, activities and printables to explore geology, rocks and minerals and earth science.

Geology has free printable geology lesson plans and earth science worksheets. You can print charts, geographical maps, geologic maps, periods of the earth, rocks and minerals, earth structure and diagrams that demonstrate plate tectonics. Look for earth cut-away models, soil layers, volcanoes, ring of fire, the relationship between volcanoes and earthquakes, carbon dating, how fossils and fossil fuels develop, rocks and minerals and more.

Teacher Vision is a superb resource for worksheets and lesson plans on earth science, rocks and minerals and geology. Scroll around to find specific earth science activities you need. Teachers and homeschool parents don't miss the huge assortment of geology and earth science printables awaiting you at National Geographic Kids!

Next, spelunk (that's explore in geo-speak) your way over to the Geological Society of America for dozens of free printable geologylesson plans. Who better than the GSA to teach kids about earth science, geology, rocks and minerals, ages of the earth models and other earth-friendly topics? Also, Pinterest has lots of free geology printables and activities. including this booklet from Preschool Powol Packets free printable earth science lesson plans. 

Mining Matters' has some useful educational free printable resources geared specifically to coal mining. Here a few more links to free printable rocks and minerals lesson plans and Montessori science rocks and minerals activities. 

Hands-on Geography Social Studies Earth Science Lessons and Games Using Globes

April is Earth Month and it's a good time to explore earth science and world geography. With the National Geography Bee right around the corner, here are hands-on social studies lessons, map activities and geography games with globes. Playing geography games with globes helps students visualize the big picture better than with maps. Use map activities to locate specific places and use globes for accurate place countries in the world at large. Use geography games with globes to demonstrate earth science lessons, just in time for Earth Month in April!

Race Around the World map activities: Divide students into teams of 2-4. Give each team a globe and attach a world map to the wall or bulletin board. Call out countries, cities and provinces for teams to locate their globes. The first team to find the location wins a point. After the location is found indicate it on the wall map with a pin or sticky note arrow (available at most office supply retailers).

Earth Science Jeopardy: Students may play individually or in teams. Draw a Jeopardy grid on a Dry-Erase board, overhead projector or chalkboard. Label five categories across the top of the Earth Science Jeopardy board. Here are some suggested earth science categories: Rivers, Mountain Ranges, Africa, Asia, Islands, Europe, United States, South America, Bodies of Water, Northern Hemisphere, Locations that begin with ____ (fill in letter). Fill in dollar amounts as in regular Jeopardy. Players select a category and value. The geography games leader calls out a place and team members must locate it on globes. Give teams buzzers or bells to sound when they find the answer.

Latitude and Longitude Hide 'n Seek map activities: Explain the how lines and degrees of latitude and longitude work. Official latitude lines--also called parallels--go east to west and longitude lines go north and south. There are 180 latitude lines--90 above the equator (north) and 90 below (south). There are 360 lines of longitude (180 in the eastern hemisphere and 180 in the western hemisphere). They are divided into 24 groups which define time zones as well as geographical locations. Use coordinate geometry to place cities and landforms in lines of latitude and longitude. Ask students to list different earth science landforms located with the latitude and longitude markings. Ask students list cities and locales based on latitude and longitude coordinates or bearings.

Time zones bingo map activities: Using the small dial attached to the top of the globe, teach students how read lines of longitude to determine time zone. Call out a time zone. Students fill their card by locating and listing a city or province in that time zone. Require older students to calculate what time it is in different countries by giving the time in another time zone. Explain the Greenwich Mean Time system.

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 Botany Lesson Plans--Plant Science-Roots and Stems

Biology science activities naturally focus on living things. Teach students about botany and plant biology in spring science activities. As students watch nature awakening all around, they observe plant biology and plant structure--seeds, roots, stems, buds, leaves, flowers and fruit--first hand. Teach kids about botany for Earth Month in April. In May and June, students can explore flowers and more mature plant structure. Here are links and websites with hundreds of free printable spring science activities on botany, plants, trees, plant biology and flowers. Get free printable spring science coloring pages, worksheets, charts and diagrams.

The Teacher's Corner has free printable biology science activities and botany lesson plans. Plants and trees cover enormous area to study that you will want to check out these websites and see which have materials specific to what you need. Activities cover edible plants, medicinal plants, toxic and unsafe plants, plant biology, finding and naming plants native to your area, biomes and much more. Visit Enchanted Learning's science homepage for general biology, spring science activities andfree printable lesson plans on trees, plants, botany and plant biology.

Lesson Plans Central has free printable science lesson plans and spring science activities. Instead of linking to the page on plants, visit the general science activities page for more extended spring science lesson plans. Edupics is always a superior internet resource for free printable realistic coloring pages. Edupics has many coloring pages of trees, plants and botany coloring pages for spring science. Primary Games has lots of free printable flowers and plants coloring pages. Biology Junction 

Free Printable Biology Worksheets and Science Lesson Plans

Parents, do you get a little queasy when your child tells you she needs help with her science project? Does the school science fair give you panic attacks? There's always that cool dad who comes up with awesome science projects that leave your little bean plant looking pathetic. Then there's that creative mom who makes other parents look like losers. Well fear not--here's a list of free printable science experiments, science projects and science crafts to knock that science fair out of the universe! Teach your kiddo valuable science lessons with these STEM activities (STEM activities cover science, technology, engineering and math--what was called in the old days science experiments).

Home Education Resources is a really comprehensive website with tons of free printable science projects and STEM activities. lesson plans and learning materials for teachers and homeschoolers. This page has 24 free printable science experiments for third or fourth graders on up. You can use them for younger grades if the instructions are read and explained to the students. There are experiments on color, light, physics, forces and motion and health activities. Use for a basis for science fair projects.

TSL Books has over forty free printable science lesson plans, experiments and STEM activities that could be used as science experiments. Choose from many different concepts: animals, habitats, biomes, plants, seeds, mammals, ocean life, weather, butterflies, five senses, motion, vehicles, fuels, planets, farm animals, whales, savanna life and more. There are cut and paste activities, puzzles, crossword, booklets, matching, coloring pages, mazes and more. Use these materials to assemble a science fair display.

Paper Toys has free printable paper models of vehicles, buildings and artifacts. Print and make these 3D paper crafts to use in science projects for a technology and science fair. This site has even morefree printable paper models to make for engineering science projects. ABC Teach has complete units with free printable science experiments and ideas for science projects. Scholastic has morefree printable science experiments. And Enchanted Learning is always a good source for free printable materials for science projects and STEM activities.

Green Earth Lesson Plans: Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Dr. Seuss celebrates his birthday on March 2. We celebrate Seuss in March with National Reading Month and Read Across America. For good Seuss fun, why not read "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" and make oobleck What's Oobleck? It's Seuss for Goop-Slime-Silly Putty-Gak Splat-Flubber. Those are commercial names. But you can make your own. 

But watch out. Oobleck has a mind of its own as Bartholomew finds out (he's the lad who had hat trouble in Seuss's 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.") Here are oobleck recipes. Stretchy, noise putty Oobleck (fondly referred to by kids as "farting" putty.) Mix in zippered plastic bag, equal parts liquid laundry starch and white school glue. Liquid laundry starch is located with laundry supplies. A common brand is Sta-Flo. It's a light blue milky substance. Mix with fingers till glue is blended in and there is no tackiness. Kneading makes Oobleck rubbery and bouncy. Galactic glitter Oobleck. Give Oobleck a glam makeover. Add a little glitter to the noise putty recipe. This is the same recipe for Silly Putty or Flubber. Keep fresh in refrigerator stored in plastic bag. Glow in the Dark Oobleck. Make Halloween Oobleck by adding a little glow powder or luminescent fact paint to the Oobleck. Take it outdoors or shine a black light on it. Mystery oozing Oobleck: Blend small amounts of water in powdered cornstarch. The Oobleck moves back and forth between liquid and solid states of matter. It "melts" with warmth of your hands hardens as it cools. Touch and it melts. Like Bartholomew's oobleck it seems to have a life of its own. Mix directly on a table. Spills dry and vacuum up easily. Here are more science recipes and homemade art supplies made f