Free printable World War I lesson plans for Veterans Day, Armistice Day

Veterans Day is celebrated November 11. It's also called Armistice Day and Remembrance Day. We honor veterans, military and those who've died. We remember World War One, which truce was called on November 11, 1918. Here are free printable Veterans Day coloring pages. Images include American military, patriotic themes and WWI history.

Edupics has free printable Remembrance Day coloring pages. There are also over 100 military pictures to print and color. There are images of soldiers, weapons, vehicles, sailors, uniforms and insignia. Pictures are realistic and detailed. They cover wars from different countries and times in history. There are sections on printable WWI and WWII coloring pages.

Apples 4 the Teacher has several sections with printable coloring pages for holidays. Veterans Day coloring pages are linked here. Here's the site's free printable Social Studies lesson plans page. There are printable coloring pages of flags, presidents, famous people, American symbols and history.

Raising Our Kids has a really nice assortment of free printable Veterans Day coloring pages. These could be used to make homemade cards for American national patriotic holidays like 4th of July and Memorial Day, too.

Coloring Book Fun has a free printable patriotic themed coloring pages. These simple images would make good preschool holiday activities. Little ones can color them for greeting cards to give to senior citizens.

DL-TK has free printable Remembrance Day coloring pages and crafts. There are also mini booklets to use as coloring books. There are Veterans Day word searches and puzzles and poppy crafts. Coloring.ws has more Veterans Day coloring pages to print free.

Here are free printable GI Joe coloring pages from Educational Coloring Pages. 101 Coloring Pages has more GI Joe coloring pages to print free. Print a coloring book for kids to teach them what Veterans Day is and why we celebrate it.

Free printable pagan and Wicca sabbat crafts for Samhain

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 Crafts and Printables from Martha Stewart

 I maintain several highly-performing niche blog, the most popular ones involving printable crafts for children. Internet searchers are always seeking freebies and crafts. Click this link for loads of free printable holiday themed crafts. Look for free printable crafts for fall holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Diwali, All Saints Day, Halloween, Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), Thanksgiving, Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, Epiphany. Perfect for lesson plans.

You probably know Martha Stewart is the DIY home goddess. What you might not know is that her website offers free printable Martha Stewart craft patterns to make her many amazing crafts. This craft guru literally has crafts, recipes and printables for every holiday, theme and occasion. Whatever holiday is coming next is featured on the homepage. There's a timeline of holidays along the banner menu, so you can scroll through and find printable craft patterns and templates for past or upcoming holidays. 

Day of the Dead Lesson Plans and Printable Activities to Celebrate Dia de los Muertos

El Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, commemorates the lives of beloved dead. Day of the Dead is the Latino version of Catholic All Saints Day and All Souls Day, November 1 and 2. Dia de los Muertos traditions include creating family altars to honor the dead, visiting loved ones' graves and having picnics at the cemetery to be near the departed. Human skulls and skeletons are integral Dia de los Muertos symbols. Items are designed to look like skulls: candles, food and sugar skulls. People paint their faces to represent a skull (called a calavera). Some Halloween traditions developed from Day of the Dead but unlike Halloween, Day of the Dead isn't about scaring people. It's a religious holiday, culminating the Catholic holy days with pre-Columbian Aztec, Mixtec, Olmec and Toltec rituals of Mexico. If you need free printable Day of the Dead lesson plans to teach students about this popular cultural holiday, read on. Use the for homeschooled, public and parochial schooled kids.

Tiki Chris at Flickr has designed awesome free printable skull patterns from one basic skull template. Print these in black and white for students to color. Or print the basic skull template and have a calavera skull decorating contest! This would make an excellent art or social studies project. Using one basic pattern, students can exhibit their creativity in design. Kids will love making connections with this beautiful heritage art from Mexico.

QuestConnect.org has free printable Dia de los Muertos lesson plans and activities to thoroughly explore the Day of the Dead. Make papel picado banners, sugar skulls and skeleton crafts. Kids can learn the geography and culture of Mexico with an Oaxaca puzzle. Arty Ness has free printable Day of the Dead coloring pages, art projects, crafts with skeletons and skulls and more. Mr. Donn has a plethora of free printable Dia de Los Muertos lesson plans and activities. Use these for history, culture, geography and social studies lesson plans for middle school age kids.

Enchanted Learning has free Day of the Dead lesson plans to print. A-Z Central has a whole website devoted to Dia de los Muertos activities. Print and make crafts. Listen to music. Learn about the culture of Mexico. Play games. Learn to make recipes and foods from Mexico. National Geographic has vocabulary lessons on Day of the Dead. There's an awesome picture gallery.

Many parents, particularly Christian parents, don't celebrate Halloween. But don't mistake Day of the Dead skull for Halloween and ignore this rich, cultural festival. And don't let the skulls and skeletons freak you out. They show honor to the dead, not ghoulish fascination with death. These are as reverently handled as the nativity scenes at Christmas. And educators, if you teach ESL, please consider hosting a Day of the Dead party for students. It's good to learn about each other's cultures plus it makes Hispanic students feel more at home.

Free Printable Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, Silk Road Lesson Plans

As world explorers go, Marco Polo is probably the most curious and exciting. The exploits of Marco Polo are featured in a new Netflix Originals mini series. The next season will air in 2016. Marco Polo traveled in medieval times to explore the magical Xanadu, summer palace of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan (son of Ghengis Khan). Polo brought back exotic spices, jade, silk and strange beasts (elephants) to the western world. His travels ushered in the Silk Road and Spice Road trade systems. Marco Polo wrote about his travels in "Il Milione" or "The Travels of Marco Polo." Here are free printable Marco Polo lessons on the exploration, Kublai Khan, Xanadu and the Mongol (Mongolian) Empire.

Start at Silk Road by reading the biography of Marco Polo. Students could character map listing information about Marco Polo. Next acquaint yourself with the travels of Marco Polo. Here's a free printable map of the Marco Polo expedition, which became the Silk Road.You could expand it and attach it to a cheap roll up window shade to make a classroom map of the Silk Road. Have students color and label the map and make icons to symbols elements of the Marco Polo story.

This site describes Kublai Khan and the rise of the Mongol Empire under Ghengis Khan. Students could create a Facebook profile Ghengis or Kublai Khan to put their lives into modern perspective. Cal Tech has comprehensive information on Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Use this as a travelogue of Xanadu, the Mongol Empire and the Silk Road.

Mr. Donn offers free printable Marco Polo lessons and activities on the Mongol Empire and Kublai Khan, geared for lower elementary to middle school students. Lesson Tutor has free printable Marco Polo lessons. Click on the checkmarks beside each lesson to open the activities on Kublai Khan, Xanadu and the travels in the Mongol Empire.

Older students might complete these free printable Marco Polo worksheets and study guide. These lessons work well students in grades 4-8. Here's a more descriptive discussion on Xanadu and Mongol Empire with re-enactors dressed in Mongolian battle dress and villagers costumes. There are images of artifacts from the Kublai Khan dynasty which students could make replicas of. Last, for a creative writing and art lessons, have students draw what they imagine the Mongol Empire and Kublai Khan may have looked like using Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Xanadu, the Ballad of Kublai Khan

Free Printable Leaf and Tree Identification Charts for Science Lesson Plans

A popular autumn lesson plan is to assign students to make a leaf identification booklet. Here are free printable tree identification charts and leaf patterns and fall craft stencils. Parents, homeschoolers and teachers, make flashcards with these tree and leaf patterns. Use in hands-on Montessori style games for nature science study. Make tree and leaf books. Assign students to collect leaves, press them or make leaf rubbings. Students should label leaves and trees using identification diagrams.

About Forestry has free printable leaf patterns for tree and leaf identification from common trees around the country. The site also has textbook-quality, beautifully detailed free printable leaf coloring pages taken from naturalist Charles Sprague Sargent's leaf plate illustrations. Each page features a different leaf with its corresponding tree, berry, nut and foliage. These printable illustrations include cut-away drawings and other helpful identification data, plus the Latin classification for genus and species of the tree. The website gives the leaf and tree names in their American variation. Use these printables for taxonomy lessons on KPCOFGS (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family Genus and Species) as developed by zoologist Carolus Linnaeus.

Arbor Day offers several printable nature science resources and online tree and leaf identification activities. Here's a link for About Forestry's leaf and tree identification homepage. From here, follow the links for different information about conifers, deciduous trees, hardwoods, and other assorted trees from different biomes and habitats. Don't miss these free printable forest map. Here are free printable leaf stencils for decorations and children's activities.

Free Printable Poetry Frames, Poem Patterns and Creative Writing Prompts

April is National Poetry Month and NaPoWriMo (an online poetry slam project). Here are poetry writing prompts for teachers. Poetry templates can help break the creative ice. 

ETTC has 30+ free printable poetry frames and poem templates on all different subjects and themes. Many relate to nature (a common theme in poetry), all about me and emotion and feeling poems. Many of these free printable poem template cover grammar, word usage and other English language arts concepts.

TSL Books has loads of free printable writing prompts, including frame poem templates, poetry prompts and story starters. There are poem templates available for preschool to upper elementary school. Check Students Handouts for more challenging printable poetry writing prompts. Use for personal narrative writing prompts, too.

St. Jean's an assortment of free printable poem templates, poetry frames and graphic organizers: couplets, triplets, quatrain, tanka, sonnet, limerick, cinquain, haiku, persona and many other poetry templates to print.

TNEllen has eight free printable poem templates with different variations on the basic "I am' and "All about me" poem theme. Examples are provided. Creative writing teachers can simply block out the example words and print the poetry frame. Students may refer to the example or fill in their own words like a Mad-Lib fill-in-the-blank activity.

Cape.k12 has about 20 free printable poetry frames grouped by grade level. Each link focuses on different types of poetry writing frames and templates. Free printable haiku, cinquain, acrostic, 5 Ws, alliteration and diamante poetry template plus several other poem activities are available.