Free Printable Valentine's Day Countdown Calendar

Countdown calendars are becoming very popular to help children count down the days to special events and holidays. Here are free printable valentine countdown calendars to number the days till Valentine’s Day. These cute cut and paste craft works well for preschool, special needs kids, elementary classrooms, homeschool and Girl Scout troop activities.

Make free printable valentine countdown calendars reusable by laminating or printing and pasting to the inside of a file folder or recycled cardboard. There are a variety of ways to label days till Valentines Day. Here are religious Christian valentine countdown calendars with Bible verses. Print in black and white and let children color them. To print in black and white set your printer "preferences" to "black ink cartridge" or "print in gray scale". Children should cut them out and arrange in order 1-14. They can also do a backwards valentine countdown calendar to learn counting backwards. Holiday themed activities for kids are always a hit!

Here are more Valentine Day countdown calendars and activities for kids. Pinterest has several free printable valentine countdown calendars, too. This website also has an assortment of Valentines Day calendars to print free. Kids might do one of the free printable valentine crafts activities for kids or make recipes from Disney Family each day till Valentines Day to countdown to the holiday.

Valentines Day countdown calendars and crafts activities for kids are great for practicing math, fine motor and scissor skills. Calendars are ideal for use with younger preschool, kindergarten and special needs students. They're simple and user-friendly making calendars ideal for children who are easily frustrated. Countdown calendars are also great for teaching math skills like counting, sequencing, patterns and calendar skills.

Free Printable STEM, Engineering, Robotics Lessons, Physics Activities

April is Earth Month and it's also science fair season--time to think science projects and hands-on science fun. Unfortunately, the most interesting sciences--physics, physical science, technology and robotics--are often taught in boring ways. And that's sad because research continually shows how important STEM activities (science, technology, engineering and math) are for kids. Physics studies how things work and explores motion, energy, machinery (and it might surprise you as to what is considered a machine), lightwaves, sound waves, radio waves, magnetism and more. Physical science is the most enjoyable science to teach because it's easy to demonstrate, can be taught using found stuff around the house, gives students lots of feeling of success and connects well to math, geometry, algebra and other STEM activities. Here are not-dull free printable physical science activities, lesson plans, experiments, worksheets, vocabulary cards, puzzles and games to make physical science the most popular subject in school!

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) offers a plethora of free printable physics lesson plans. Some must be ordered but there are many free printable science activities are available online. Concepts include space travel, solar system, robotics education, technology, physics, astronomy and more. There are free printable solar system physics activities featuring Disney Pixar's WALL-E called Mapping the Moon with WALL-E. Click on the links "K-4 Guide" and "5-8 Guide" for printable teacher materials and lesson plans. A popular free robotics education activity is the Mission to Mars Curiosity Rover packet that include games, coloring pages, 3D models to cut and paste, quizzes, worksheets and extensions,

Cornell University Cooperative Extension partners with 4-H to provide 4-H Robotics education program. 4-H Robotics education includes physics simulations, robotics education and physical science games. There are hands-on and virtual online physical science activities. There's a charge for materials but some free activities. These STEM activities could be used for Destination Imagination programs.

The SMILE program (from the Illinois Institute of Technology) is a warehouse of free printable STEM activities, robotics education activities and physics lesson plans, Science lesson plans cover basic physical science concepts like weather, water, states of matter, Periodic Table of the Elements, friction, gravity, mass, inertia, electricity and magnetism. Smithsonian Science and Technology hasfree printable physics lesson plans that correlate with exhibits in the Smithsonian museums. There are many free printable physical science activities on flight, aviation and rocketry.

The Michigan Science Center offers free printable physical science activities to help students extend their experience at the museum or use as stand-alone lessons. Activities are perfect for elementary physics, science and machine technology classes. MIT is the leader in universities of higher education in science. Here are free MIT video lectures, demonstrations and interviews that students could really benefit from in their physical science studies. The Henry Ford has a huge collection of free printable STEM activities and educator resources on science, history and physics, from the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield 

Free Printable CNY Year of the Snake, Monkey, Rabbit Lesson Plans to Print

February 8 celebrates Chinese New Year of the Monkey 2016. Each year in the 12-year Chinese zodiac, a different spirit animal is honored as are people born under that animal sign (in 2016, 2004, 1992, 1980, 1968, 1956 and on back through the multiples of 12). Greet each other on February 8 with the traditional Chinese New Year blessing "Gung Hay Fat Choy!" Chinese New Year is part of the Spring Festival and ends with the Lantern Festival. Looking for free printable Chinese New Year of the Monkey activities? Here are CNY crafts, coloring pages, greeting cards, Spring Festival lesson plans, Lantern Festival crafts and more. Print Chinese zodiac crafts, animal crafts, party decorations, CNY games and puzzles and lots more.

The best place to start is Enchanted Learning for free printable Chinese New Year of the Monkey activities, crafts and more. Enchanted Learning is super-educational with free printable maps, social studies lesson plans, worksheets, mini-booklets to color cut and paste, coloring pages, history activities, animals of the Chinese zodiac crafts, to name a few.

How about a free printable coloring book of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac along with their Chinese symbol. Animals that represent Chinese New Year are Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Ox, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig (in that order). 2017 will by Year of the Rooster, 2018 will be Year of the Dog (and so on). To find out which animal you were born under, count backwards or forwards from the current year or add or subtract multiples of 12. For example, if you were born in 1964, the closest Year of the Monkey is 1968, so count backwards four years to 1964, Year of the Dragon.

DL-TK has free printable Chinese New Year of the Monkey activities, monkey crafts, games and CNY lesson plans. Then scamper like a monkey over to Activity Village for a banana tree full of printable Chinese New Year crafts, games, puzzles, Chinese lunar calendars, CNY greeting cards, jigsaw, stories and more. Click to find animal specific activity pages. Here's the Year of the Monkey page with monkey-themed prinatables. And here's the page with free printable Spring Festival and Lantern Festival crafts. Plus, help kids get organized with free printable 2016 animal calendars. Many of the animals of the Chinese zodiac are featured--mouse (rat), dog, sheep, chick (rooster), rabbit and a mischievious monkey, perfect for Year of the Monkey.

And no Chinese New Year is complete with free printable animals masks to monkey around with! The ones from Animal Jr. are totally adorbs!
Here are some nifty masks from ancient China to print for CNY. Printables 4 Kids has more cuteChinese New Year coloring pages, zodiac activities, animal masks, monkey crafts and masks and other goodies. For educational Chinese New Year printables, visit Apples 4 the Teacher. There are free printable Chinese New Year coloring pages, including animals of the Chinese zodiac, maps of China and a Chinese flag to color.
Learn all about the culture and history of China, the Spring Festival, the Lantern Festival and other Chinese traditions with free printable games, puzzles, worksheets and word searches.

Teachers, parents, homeschoolers, religious educators, Sunday school teachers bookmark First-School and visit frequently. For Chinese New Year, First-School has free printable Lantern Festival crafts, Spring Festival activities, Chinese zodiac coloring pages, math games from China, Chinese history and literature lessons and so much more. Activities are geared from preschool to third grade.

Free Printable Pagan Holiday Lesson Plans for Samhain, Yule, Ostara, etc

Much is known about religious and national holidays. But the least known holidays--and ironically some of the oldest--are pagan or Wiccan. Here are free printable Wicca crafts, coloring pages and resources for pagan holidays (sabbats).

* Joelle's Sacred Grove features a pagan calendar with activities for and explanations of the eight sabbats.

--Yule (or Winter Solstice)--between December 20-23. Yule ends the old year and begins the new (starts near Christian Christmas)

--Imbolc--or Brid's Day--February 2

--Ostara (Easter)--Spring Equinox--celebrated around Christian Easter.

--May Day or Beltaine is celebrated on the eve of April 30 into May 1. It's also called Walpurgis Night.

--Litha or midsummer's eve or , which celebrates the first day of summer (Summer Solstice) around June 21-25.

--Lughnasadh, a harvest festival which falls on July 31-August 1. It's called Lammas in some countries.

--Mabon, the autumnal equinox (the first day of fall).

--Samhain celebrates darkness and coincides with Halloween.

* Pooka Pages provides free printable Wicca coloring pages, games, spell and incantations and stories.

* ADF--A Druid Fellowship (or Ár nDraíocht Féin) is a neopagan group dedicated to promoting old pagan customs. This link takes you to the kids page with free printable pagan activities for Lughnasadh, Imbolc, Yule and Samhain.

* Stella Australis has a free printable Wicca coloring book with the elementals, gods and goddesses, Egyptian and Greek deities, moon phases and a Wheel of the Year, puzzles, Wicca vocabulary, runic symbols, history, magic, tarot and zodiac.

* Vintage Holiday Crafts has free printable nostalgic Victorian and Edwardian period greeting cards and crafts. They're labeled by their traditional holiday name May Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Easter, but images hark back to pagan counterparts: Maybon, Lughnasadh, Samhain and Ostara.

I linked you to Halloween/Samhain because that's the next holiday coming, but scroll around for the others.

Free Printable Mayan, Aztec, Incan Lesson Plans

The Mayan calendar predicted the world would end December 21, 2012 (12-21-12). It didn't, but it does raise interesting questions on how time calculated. And it drew attention to the fascinating Maya civilization and other ancient pre-Columbian Mesoamerica native cultures like Inca, Aztec, Toltec and Olmec. Here are free printable Mayan calendars, lesson plans on time measurement and Mesoamerica culture study activities, hieroglyphics and lifestyle lessons Aztec, Inca and Maya civilization.

Printable Colouring Pages has six free printable images of Mayan calendars, referred to as Tzolkin or Haab, in the ancient tongue of the Maya civilization. Click here for another set of free printable Mesoamerica coloring pages. Be sure to teach students that Mesoamerica refers to a geographical region--around Mexico, Central America including Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador--and to the pre-Columbian historical time period when the ancient Aztec, Zapotec, Teotihuacano, Olmec, Mixtec, Toltec and Maya civilization flourished. The ancient Inca civilization grew up around Peru in South America.

How-to-Draw has free printable Mayan calendars. Words for each symbol listed near Mayan calendars. Here's a free printable decoder tools for Mayan calendars. Click here for free printable Maya civilization coloring pages. Here are more math lessons based on the Mayan calendar. Here are lesson plans on the 20 day cycle of the Tzolkin or Mayan calendars, with inscriptions and codec hieroglyphics (picture symbols) used in the Tzolkin calendar, plus names and translations from modern Yucatec, classic Maya and English. Here are free printable math lessons, calendar converters and hieroglyphics from the solar Haab Mayan calendars.

Edupics has free printable coloring pages from the pre-Columbian Mesoamerica Aztec, Inca and Maya civilization. Look for pictures of famous pre-Columbian works of art, hieroglyphics and ancient religious sites of Machu Picchu, Tenochtitlan and Chichen Itza or the Temple of Kukulkan (now listed in the new revised wonders of the world). Check out these links for free printable paper models of Chichen Itza and Machu Picchu and Tenochtitlan.

Here are lesson plans on the monolithic Olmec heads and Toltec statues. Here's a free printable 161-page booklet of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica lesson plans on the Maya civilization. J.Q.Jacobs gives a detailed descriptions of the Haab and Tzolkin Mayan calendar along with images of their codices and instructions for use.