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Showing posts with label sun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sun. Show all posts

Earth Day Party: Spring themed snacks, crafts, books and printables


Spring is here and what better way to celebrate than with an Earth Day story party? Here are spring and weather themed snacks and snack crafts (snacks that do double duty as crafts that kids make themselves). I've added a list of books to read for literature connections, along with free printable book PDFs where available. 

Spring flower cookies: Use refrigerated cookie dough or better yet, make better-for-you honey cookie dough (unbleached flour, honey, baking soda and light butter). Color pink or purple with grape juice. Have each child make four small balls and arrange in a square. Bake and place M&Ms in center. Read "The Tiny Seed" Eric Carle using this free printable PDF. 

Rain Goblets: Buy inexpensive rain gauges and to serve juice. Kids can practice measurement plus get a cool rain gauge to take home and use in the garden. Read "Peter Spier's Rain"

Rainbow eggs: These are made like dyed Easter eggs. Hard boil eggs (about 15 minutes). Cool and gently crackle shells but don't remove shells. Dip eggs in food coloring or (my preference) different colored juices for dye. Now remove shells to find the pretty patterns in the egg white. Reuse colored shells in a mosaic pattern to be really eco-friendly for Earth Day. Read "The Egg Tree" by Katherine Milhouse and "An Extraordinary Egg" by Leo Lionni. 

Bird's nest cupcakes: Decorate cupcakes with frosting and sprinkle dyed green coconut on top. You can use broken pretzel sticks too. Place jelly beans or Skittles in "nest" for eggs. Use these in spring science lesson plans. Read "Are You My Mother?" (P.D. Eastman). Here's a free printable PDF

Dirt cups: Teach kids about soil layers, gardening and spring planting with these super easy, super yummy snacks kids will love to make. Per kid, you'll need a half cup of pudding, two Oreos, a graham cracker, a handful of M&Ms (spring pastel colors look the prettiest) and some gummy worms. If you can find gummy insects, add those too! Have kids make up chocolate pudding and crush Oreos and graham cracker. In clear plastic cups layer graham cracker (sand), pudding (mud) and cookies (dirt). Then they "plant" their seeds (M&Ms) and arrange their gummy critters on top! Perfect for Earth Day! Read (of course) "Diary of a Worm." (Doreen Cronin). 

Piggies in the mud: This was my youngest son Jake's FAVORITE! It's just chocolate pudding and animal crackers. Kids will love marching their animals through the "mud." Teach them that most animal species have babies in spring. Read "Ox-Cart Man." (Donald Hall). Here's a free printable PDF

Butterfly sandwiches: Let kids make their favorite sandwiches. Cut in triangles. Place pointy side together to make wings. Put a baby carrot or pickle spear in the center. That's the body, that was the caterpillar. Read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." (Eric Carle) Here's a free printable PDF, plus, check out my blog post for more Very Hungry Caterpillar printables. 


Free Printable Earth Science, Solar System Activities, Lessons


There are many reasons to celebrate April. April bids farewell to winter and ushers in spring. Easter and Earth Month are celebrated in April. April 22 is the official Earth Day. Here are environmental science worksheets and lesson plans to explore this "green" month of April.
Maine.gov has a free printable earth science activities. There lessons on different environmental features. Teach them as parts of the body.
Rocks (igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary). Rocks are the bones of our planet.
Minerals (quartz, silica sand, crystals, MOS Hardness Scale, cleavage, color, mineral identification). Minerals are earth's tendons.
Water (ground water, aquifers, watershed, water cycle, precipitation, percolation, wetlands, acid rain, bodies of water, oceanography, polar ice caps). Water is our earth's lifeblood.
Soil (structure, layers, decomposition, fossils, fossil fuels, composting). Soil is the muscular system.
Geophysics (geology, plate tectonics, magnets, earthquakes, volcanoes, the Ring of Fire, thermodynamics, geysers). Geophysics is the endocrine system. Given the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan, these lessons are even more vital and significant.
Ecology (land use, deforestation, slash and burn farming, fallow periods, water testing, soil evaluation). Think of ecology like health. Caring for the earth is like caring for our bodies. What we put into or do to our bodies heal and sustains or hurts and destroys. Likewise, what we do to our earth either helps or harms it. Environmental groups are like the earth's physicians.
This booklet provides hands-on activities, games, simulations, map reading exercises, field trips, treasure and scavenger hunts, experiments and extensions for social studies, reading and math. It gives interactive practice applications for Point-Slope formula (y=mx+b). That's helpful for S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, math) connections. In keeping with earth month, don't waste paper printing. Use recycled paper or scraps from your recycling bin. Print with biodegradable ink.

For more printable science lessons, visit my blogs Free Printable Lesson Plans and Free Lesson Plans 4U and Science Experiments and Chemistry Lessons.

Free Printable Earth Day Insects and Bugs Coloring Pages, Spring Lessons

Do you like insects and spiders or do bugs bug you? Whether you're a hexapoda aficionado (bug lover) or a you have a arachnophobia, it's important to understand insects and spiders and their place in the environment. Here are free printable insects activities and bugs lesson plans. If there's something creepy crawly in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Bug Busters, aka Orkin Pest Control. Check out Orkin's online learning center for free printable insects lesson plans, bug identification charts, insect coloring pages, bug information, insect activity booklets, games, puzzles and worksheets.
Here's a beautifully illustrated free printable Insect Identification booklet. This free printable guide to insects features detailed images of bugs, plus information on bug habits and habitats. This will help identify safe and dangerous insects in the home, yard and environment. There are free printable insects lesson plans. Click here for the Orkin Pest Library with free printable insects diagrams, charts, images and activities. There are materials about ants, flies, cockroaches, rodents, termites, spiders, stinging pest, other pests and wildlife. Here's a free printable insects booklet with bug coloring pages, games, puzzles, experiments and crafts.
The Orkin Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History offers free printable lesson plans spiders, butterflies and insects booklet. Here's a free printable butterfly coloring pages. Insects, bugs and spiders are perfect spring science lesson plans. Explore caterpillars, butterflies and cocoons, spiders and spider webs. Here are free printable insects and spiders coloring pages. Print coloring pages of caterpillars, butterflies, ladybugs, bees, ants, dragonflies, moths, grasshoppers, beetles, praying mantis, mosquitoes, scorpions, flies, termites and fireflies or lightning bugs.
Spiders are not insects, but arachnids. Use free printable spider coloring pages to compare and contrast spiders and insects. Free Printable Coloring pages has nearly 50 insects and spiders coloring pages. Some are cartoon bugs but most are realistic images. Click this link for beautifully detailed butterfly coloring pages. Each butterfly species is labeled. Images look like stained glass windows coloring pages. Use them for science lessons on insects, butterflies, spring, metamorphosis or new life.
Coloring Castle has free printable coloring pages of bees and butterflies, There are also free printable ladybug coloring pages and lesson plans of a ladybugs 100 chart and a numbers 1-10 pyramid. Coloring Book Fun has free printable insect coloring pages, mostly cartoons.
Edupics has over 100
 free printable insects coloring pages and 41 butterflies coloring pages. For more coloring book fun, visit the Grand Rapids Parenting Examiner at Free Coloring Pages 4U 

Free Printable Seasons Activities, Weather Lesson Plans, Spring science activities

March 21 marks the first day of spring in many countries. For those of us locked in ice and snow and cold, this date can't come too early. Many of us in the US have had a long, cold snowy winter; we are pretty happy to hear those cheery little birds singing and see tiny crocuses bravely trying to poke their lavender heads up from beneath the ice and snow. How about some free spring coloring pages to occupy those children who are getting tired of winter and students who have had enough of a school year with still many weeks to go? Fill your classrooms and homes with the colors of spring.
Coloring Book Fun got us through a long bout of bronchitis followed by chicken pox this winter. The coloring pages are simple enough for the not yet seasoned colorers, and yet offered some more challenging pictures for our veteran colorers. This site has a huge stock of free printable coloring pages based on seasons, weather, holidays, 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.
DLTK is a site I've featured for other printables. It provides all sorts of free printable coloring pages, lesson plans, puzzles, crafts, projects, scissor practice, sequencing practice, music, song sheets, stories, spring and Easter. DLTK has all kinds of pre-school activities that will reinforce pre-reading, 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. You'll find some really cute Easter coloring as well!
Print Activities has a really large data bank of banner and ad-free printables with educational themes, 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 puzzles are themed on Spring, but you can find other topics with themed puzzles: holidays, seasons, animals, It may take a moment to load, but it is worth it.
May you have a happy spring, a blessed Easter and hours of pleasant learning and growing with your students and families!