free printable lesson plans on alphabet to zoology and everything in between
Free Printable Green Environmental Science Earth Day Lesson Plans
Free printable spring science crafts, Earth Day recycled trash crafts, weather unit activities
First, visit DL-TK for a rainbow of printable weather science craft projects. Make windsocks, windchimes, suncatchers, picture frame crafts and more from recycled trash. Use recycled paper to make free printables.
To welcome spring, Earth Day, Easter, a new baby, how about making a giant greeting card on front walk? Bust out the sidewalk chalk and get busy decorating! No sidewalks? Use the patio or unfurl a roll of paper outside! Here's an easy, super cheap recipe for sidewalk chalk.
Next, make pet baby tornados! Here's a Montessori activity for practical life learning centers. Have children wash glass jars and lids, to teach life skills of dishwashing. Next, children will fill glass jars almost to top with water and add a drop of dish soap. To create the baby tornado, shake jar with swirling motion. A funnel shape or vortex will appear. Use these science activities to demonstrate a vortex, tornado, funnel and even the sink drain works. You could discuss clouds, precipitation, wind.
To extend these hands-on science activities to language arts and creative writing, have kids think up names and make up stories for their pet tornado. Next, extend into math lesson plans making books from cereal box cardboard. Teach geometry, measurement, scissor skills cutting recycled paper to cover books. Next alternate writing and blank paper. Have children write on the lined paper and illustrate on the blank pages.
Sing weather songs in circle time. Enjoy spring themed snacks (stay tuned for recipes to follow). For quiet time, read weather and spring science books like "The Year at Maple Tree Farm" "The Little House", "Ox-Cart Man", "The Carrot Seed" "The Lorax" "The Tiny Seed" and "Frog and Toad are Friends."
Free Printable Earth Day Lesson Plans, Activities, Crafts
Free Printable Earth Science, Solar System Activities, Lessons
Free Printable Earthquake Lesson Plans, Earth Science, Emergency Preparedness Lessons
Free printable ecology lesson plans from George Washington Carver
Earth Day is April 22 and all month long we celebrate earth awareness. I can't think of a better person to introduce children to in honor of Earth Month, than Dr. George Washington Carver. This African American scientist came from humble roots to literally
reinvent agriculture. Use this free printable George Washington Carver science activity booklet to learn more about this famous African American--and Nobel Prize winner--for Black History Month.
In
this free printable activity booklet, learn how George Washington Carver was
born into slavery and orphaned as an infant. Despite unspeakable poverty and
oppression, this courageous young African American got an education and went on
lead the nation in agricultural research. Service to mankind was Dr. Carver's
mission. Raised in slavery, George Washington Carver learned to be resourceful
and creative. Slaves were forced to make do with very little. They learned to
improvise. George Washington Carver developed hundreds of new uses for many
local products that had heretofore been considered junk. He invented countless
uses for the peanut and sweet potato, which up to this point were used only as
animal fodder. Dr. Carver referred to his simple laboratory as "God's
Little Workshop."
The
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has created a free printable
activity booklet based on the life and work of Dr. George Washington Carver.
This activity booklet has coloring pages, word search, puzzles, science charts
and diagrams, science experiments and biology lesson plans to help students
explore Dr. George Washington Carver. This activity booklet includes several
free printable charts that show the many products that Dr. Carver created based
on native plants like the peanut and sweet potato. He developed textiles,
building supplies, cosmetics as well as food products.
This
hardworking African American is the prefect focus for Black History Month
lesson plans bur also for any science unit. Dr. Carver revolutionized antiquated,
hurtful farming practices. He taught farmers to practice crop rotation and to
plant nitrogen-producing plants which George Washington Carver was instrumental
in improving not only agricultural methods, but also the economy of the rural
south. By teaching farmers new ways to use native crops, Dr. Carver built up
commerce and trade after the Civil War, in impoverished southern states.
Explore this famous African American using free printable resources on Earth
Day or during Earth Month in April.
Free Printable May Day, Labor History, Union Organizing Lesson Plans
Free Printable Labor Day Coloring Pages and Lesson Plans
Free printable May Day labor union history lesson plans
Spring is a poignant time in labor history. March 25, 1911 remembers 146 workers, mostly women, lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. April 16 mourns Ireland's Easter Rising of slain Feinians. April 28 marks Workers' Memorial Day, on which the organized labor movement pays tribute to the fallen in workplace accidents or in organized labor struggles. May 1 is May Day, honoring International Workers' Day. May 4 commemorates casualties at Chicago's Haymarket riot at a 1886 labor rally. May 19, 1920 is a day when the organized labor movement grieves the Matewan and Mingo County massacre of coal miners. On May 26, 1937 those who would from unions were assaulted at Ford's River Rouge plant "Battle of the Overpass" in Detroit.
Organized
labor history is taught as part of American history, but there is no American
(or world) history without labor history. Unions, collective bargaining--the
fight for workers' rights impact every industry, occupation and person.
Teachers and homeschoolers, you can educate students about unions with these
free printable May Day and labor history lesson plans. These links include
websites, activities, worksheets, movies and books on the organized labor
movement.
The
American Labor Studies Center offers a gamut of free printable organized labor movement lesson
plans. It covers history,
events, strikes, lockouts, workplace injuries, child labor, working conditions,
collective bargaining, 8-hour workday, sweatshops, slavery, organizing,
indentured servitude, socialism and labor, women's rights, African American
labor issues, minority discrimination concerns, ULP (unfair labor practices).
Lessons cover the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire (the worst workplace accident in history), West
Virginia labor, Pullman Strike (1894), Lawrence Textile Strike (1913), Lowell
Strike, Paterson Silk Strike, agriculture strikes and other events. Get free printable
union labor worksheets, fill-ins, puzzles and study guides. There are links to
films
Explore
famous labor leaders: Noam Chomsky, Joe Hill, "Big Bill" Haywood,
Pete Seeger, Jimmy Hoffa, Caesar Chavez, the Wisconsin 14 and others from
the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), AFL-CIO, Teamsters and more. This site has
biographies of women labor leaders including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mary
Harris "Mother"
Jones and more. To use
in lessons, print the list of names on one side and short bios on the other
side (mixed up). Students match person with details. Print photos and pin to a
map at places they are associated with. Or make a time line along the wall.
Plot images in history.
The
National Endowment for the Humanities offers two companion lessons in its
series The Industrial Age in America. "Sweatshops, Steel Mills
and Factories" and "Robber Barons and
Captains of Industry"
define the problems faced by workers in labor history and the reasons for the
organized labor movement. Use the worksheets and activities with middle school
and high school students.
The
Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University
in Detroit maintains the largest organized labor history archive in the U.S. It
has an impressive collection of images in physical exhibits and digital
archives on The Labor Movement and Organizations. Walther Reuther who was one of several injured
at Ford's Rouge factory "Battle of the Overpass" in Detroit.
The United Farm Workers is the union begun by Cesar Chavez that tends to itinerant
and agricultural labor issues. Along with labor movement, the UFW educates
people about food safety, immigration, deportation, earth and green
initiatives, pesticides and more. An important piece is the youth activism
page. UFW seeks to take union and agricultural awareness beyond the classroom
walls and into real life.
In
honor of May Day, here's a quote from the Albert Shanker Institute. "Imagine opening a high school U.S.
history textbook and finding no mention of-or at most a passing sentence
about-Valley Forge, the Missouri Compromise...Benjamin Franklin, Lewis and
Clark. Imagine if these key events and people just disappeared as if they'd
never existed...That is what has happened in history textbooks when it comes to
labor's part in the American story." Use these lesson plans to keep the
May Day stories and message alive.