Homemade, Recycle Bin Shoe Box Dioramas, Miniatures, Props with Free Printables

Does this scene sound familiar in your home? It's 8 pm and darling daughter is wailing. She forgot to make her school shoebox diorama project due TOMORROW! Been there done that. I wanted to say "tough luck. Take the F" (which she deserved). But being a forgetful, eleventh-hour girl myself, I confess, I empathized. So I bailed her out. The whole family helped. We made an awesome woodland Native American shoebox diorama with recycled trash and household stuff. 

For homemade shoe box dioramas for any content area, all you need is a recycle bin, craft scraps, household junk and a little ingenuity. Here are free printable dollhouse miniatures and free printable habitat diorama backgrounds. I've included free printable scale model building patterns too. 

* Backdrop. Stand shoe box upright inside box lid. Get little-miss-last-minute busy drawing background inside lid (or on plain paper to attach to lid. Our shoebox diorama required an eastern woodland background. For a science habitat diorama, draw a nature scene. For English literature, create a scene from book. One son made a baseball field for a shoebox diorama from "The Chosen." Glue on cotton balls for clouds. Tape tinsel to box top for rain. 

* Buildings. Make 3-D house from smaller box. For 3-D yard or city scene, cut boxes and attach small portions to sides. Make a row of different sizes boxes for city. Cut doors to open. Decorate as house, church, store, office building, school. We made a longhouse from a butter tub. For a tipi, use a paper cone or cup.

* Furniture.  Use dollhouse furniture. Cover small boxes with fabric, wallpaper or wrapping paper for couch, table, bed or chairs. Cut chairs from cardboard. 

* Figures. Use action figures, dolls, Fisher Price or Lego people or Polly Pockets. Or draw face on round-head peg clothespin, pencil or toilet paper tube. Bend pipe cleaners or twist ties into dolls. Add wooden bead for head or paper face. Stuff a glove. Tie with yarn to make arms from outer fingers, legs from middle, head from thumb. Wrap dolls in scrap fabric or colored paper for clothes. Tie. Glue yarn, twine, plastic or paper scraps for hair. 

* Props. Use game pieces, toy sets, doll and action figure accessories, building sets, miniatures. Postage stamps and stickers make rugs, pictures, decorations. Roll paper strip and tie with yarn for scroll or diploma. Tiny yarn balls, beads and marbles make fruit, balls, rocks, cannon balls. Lids, pill bottle covers and tube caps make glasses and dishes. Thimbles and spools are buckets, hay bales, workshop accessories. For our native American shoebox diorama fire, we used broken pencils as logs and orange and red clear plastic for fire. Cut props from cardboard. Staple fabric scraps for curtains, blankets, doors. 

* Landscape. Use small branches for trees. Draw a"garden" on brown fabric or use striped material. Cover little boxes and pill bottles with fabric, grey for rocks and brown for hills, blue for water. Make paper trees and plants from paper tubes or straws. Use plastic toy animals for farm or nature scenes. 

* Military. Use vehicles, weapons and equipment from toy soldiers or GI Joe sets. Make bandages from brown grocery bags colored red (I used this in my Crimean War diorama from "Lady of the Lamp" in 6th grade). Drape material over tripod of sticks for tent. 

Make shoebox dioramas for literature, science, history or social studies crafts. 

Habitat Science Tubs and Preschool Learning Center Activities

Preschool and Elementary Science Learning Center Ideas for Habitat Study Learning occurs best when it's interactive. Bring hands-on, cross-curricular activities to every preschool classroom learning center. Studying different countries, cultures or habitats in your classroom? Here are hands-on science center activities. 

Montessori type learning centers focus on hands-on child-led mastery learning, individual work stations and play as work activities. Activities in learning centers aim for mastery learning through exploration and task completion. Montessori science learning centers are also called sensory or sensorial learning areas. Here's a system for portable exploratory science tubs with task-oriented science experiments and activities for mastery learning.

Montessori learning centers are organized, precise and minimal. Instead of a jumble of toys, there are specific ordered learning materials with task-oriented goals. Children work in individual work stations instead of desks or tables. These are usually portable mats rolled out on the floor. Portable unit-based science tubs work well. Materials in science tubs may be preset on stationary learning mats and children rotate through learning centers to complete activities. Or children may select science tubs, bring them to their mat work stations where they interact with materials to accomplish educational tasks.

To create exploratory science tubs, you'll need small plastic boxes with lids, baskets and different science unit materials. Stacking boxes or drawers in a rolling cart work well too. You might also use zippered plastic bags for individual science units. You will arrange materials by content area. When you're studying a particular content area, you'll remove materials from drawer or box and place in baskets. This makes learning materials more appealing and approachable.

Themes for exploratory science tubs include: magnets, matters, animal classification, mammals, reptiles, air, water, weather, measurement, polymers, plants, rocks and minerals, chemistry, seeds and seed carriers, feathers, electricity, atoms, food, bubbles, bugs, spiders, electronics. Place materials to explore in science tubs. Add several related follow up tasks for mastery learning--flashcards, worksheets, matching games. Children can do mastery learning tasks in science journals for follow up.

Make available tools for exploratory science: microscope, slides, magnifying glass, tweezers, magnifying box, telescope, gram balance scale, ruler, protractor, measuring tape. On the top surface of the plastic science tubs shelf, draw outlines of tools so children know where to place tools when finished. You could also make a pegboard for them to hang tools. Children perform exploratory science tasks and then return materials to original places so other children can use them

Free Printable Animal Habitat Lesson Plans

Parents, are you homeschooling your kids or considering homeschool? Then you'll want to avail yourself of the many free printable lesson plans and worksheets online. Maybe you're needing resources for science homework help? Here are free printable animal classification charts, worksheets and taxonomy charts and diagrams to use for lesson plans. Animal classification or taxonomy, is a system of organizing creatures according to a hierarchy. It originated in Carolus Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. Creatures are organized by Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species (abbreviated KPCOFGS in science classes). Here are free printable animal

classification lesson plans and activities.

Printable Kids Worksheets has free printable animal life science worksheets, charts and diagrams.

Life science subjects include: Animal Ecosystems, Animal Vertebrate, Birds, Camouflage, Carnivores,

Herbivores, and Omnivores, Dinosaur, Food Chain, Mammals and Reptiles. Tetu Teacher at Weebly

has a free printable animal classification booklet filled with taxonomy charts and diagrams. Most are

these life science lesson plans are for grades 2-5. Here are colorful free printable animal taxonomy

lesson plans featuring the KPCOFGS system for grades preschool to third. Students learn animal

classification and other animal life science activities.

TSL Books has several free printable animal classification worksheets. Click around for other free

printable life science lesson plans to print. Here's a site that offers some printable taxonomy charts

and diagrams for taxonomy that are free. This blog has a collection of free printable animal

classification worksheets culled from around the web.

Use charts and diagrams to teach students how animal body coverings determine what animal group

the species belongs to. Students learn about animal habitats, biomes, how animals adapt to their

environment, how they live, eat, stay warm and reproduce. Students will explore endothermic (warmblooded) and ectothermic (cold-blooded) animals. Activities include lessons plans, resources, games,

coloring pages, activities, writing response lessons, puzzles, worksheets, vocabulary lists, word sort

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.

Free Printable Habitat Dioramas- Science Activities

For hands-on science lesson plans, you can't beat habitat dioramas. Students explore concepts interactively, making 3-D scenes. Shoebox dioramas (scenes set up inside boxes tilted on their sides) help students visualize concepts. Diorama activities work very well for literature, social studies, animal habitats and life science lesson plans. Use animal habitats dioramas in life science lesson plans to help students understand how creatures interact with their environment.

Animal habitat dioramas can be made with found objects and recycled trash. Or here are free printable animal habitat dioramas from Crayola. Use these animal habitat coloring pages in hands-on science lesson plans. Printable dioramas give high success and help special needs and easily frustrated students create science projects they feel proud of.

The American Museum of Natural History has free printable animal habitat dioramas and science activities for different biomes. Look for "make it" and "coloring pages" links. From there, print backgrounds and creatures. Check out printable games and puzzles and lesson plans, too.

Exploring nature has
free printable animal habitats coloring pages. Students can color and cut out and arrange in 3D shoebox dioramas. Or that could be the backdrop and they could glue plastic animals and plants in the shoebox base.

First Palette has free printable dioramas: Habitats or biomes include coral reef, African savanna, polar biomes, rainforest and Paleolithic dinosaur habitats. Free printable animal coloring pages are available at First Palette too. There are insects, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians in different biomes. Have kids color and place in the proper environment. This teaches sorting, classifying and symbiotic relationships. Have kids explore KPCOFGS--kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species--concepts too.