Free printable animal habitat dioramas, craft projects, Bingo and memory games




Hello my Omschooligans! Welcome to the Omschool! I'm Teacher Omi (Grandma) and I've been an educator in one way and another for 45 years. This blog is a culmination of that experience. I like to think of our Omschool learning environment as a tree fort. So today, I've got a tree fort of educational summer games and crafts to explore nature science. We'll look at plant and animal habitats today. Use this list of websites where you can find free printable animal habitat games, crafts, and educational w worksheets! 

A freebie from the Omschool

Teacher Omi's 2-in-1 Game!

Get more out of your printables by printing two sets and making 

  • Bingo: Use one set of cards as your main game boards. Print the cartoon animal cards below and trim the edges. Now you have to game boards. Use the list below to call off the animals. 
  • Memory Match: Print a second set, then have the children cut the animals from one card out into individual squares.
  • Play: Flip the cut-out squares face down to play a classic memory matching game, or use them as the "calling cards" for your Bingo game!
💡 Pro Tip: Glue your cards onto old cereal boxes before cutting them out to make them sturdy and reusable!
💡 Game Tip: To keep the game going longer, you can print these names on small slips of paper, put them in a hat, and have the children draw them out one by one to mark their bingo cards!

🐾 Animal Bingo Checklist

RowAnimal
1Panda, Tiger, Lion, Hippo, Bear
2Zebra, Monkey, Elephant, Frog, Lizard
3Fox, Penguin, Giraffe, Sloth, Koala
4Owl, Raccoon, Deer, Hedgehog, Squirrel
5Parrot, Duck, Turtle, Whale, Dolphin

Free Printable Animal Habitat activities

  • Teachers Pay Teachers (Free Section): While known for teacher resources, this site has a massive library of free, user-created printables. You can find excellent "cut and paste" sorting activities, habitat matching games, and 3D diorama templates that are perfect for a hands-on math or science center.

  • 123 Homeschool 4 Me This site offers a fantastic set of free printable animal flashcards. They are perfect for sorting games (categorizing animals by biome like rainforest, desert, or ocean) and include both color and black-and-white versions to save on ink.

  • Montessori Nature: A great source for clean, simple, and self-directed learning materials. They offer beautiful matching and sorting printables specifically focused on "Animals and Their Homes," which helps children develop critical categorization skills.

  • Smithsonian Science Education Center: If you want to integrate technology, their "Habitats" game allows kids to explore different environments like coral reefs and jungles, matching animals to their correct homes in an interactive digital format.

  • Teacher Planet: This is a comprehensive resource hub that aggregates links to various habitat lesson plans, crossword puzzles, dioramas, and printable worksheets. It’s a great "one-stop-shop" to browse different teaching styles for your home classroom.

  • ABCmouse (Printables Section): They provide a variety of structured worksheets, from word searches and matching exercises to "Draw It" prompts, which are excellent for reinforcing vocabulary and foundational science concepts about ecosystems.


💡 Teacher Tip: Don't forget that many of these sites offer black-and-white printables. Using these on recycled paper in "Draft" mode is the most economical way to keep your "Omschool" resource library stocked without breaking your budget! 

🎨 Teacher Omi Craft + Game

Double the fun with your printables:

  • Coloring Fun: Always print your animal activities in black and white—now they serve double-duty as beautiful coloring pages!
  • Craft Project: Have the children cut and paste the pieces to assemble their own games (like dioramas or matching cards).
  • Bonus Extender: Turning a simple worksheet into a craft project and then a game, provides multisensory activities that make the learning stick!
💡 Pro Tip: Use markers or colored pencils to decorate the game pieces before you assemble them for the best results!

🐾 Animal Tracking Games & Footprints

  • Animal Tracks Matching Game (Utah State Parks): This is a perfect, ready-to-print resource. It includes animal names and their corresponding footprints, designed for a memory-style matching game.

  • PBS KIDS "Track Those Tracks" Game: This guide provides a full, active game plan. It includes printable animal cards and footprints, along with instructions on how to set up an indoor scavenger hunt where children follow "tracks" to find hidden animals.


💡 Teacher Omi's Pro Tip: For the footprint matching games, print two sets of the footprints. Use one set to create a "path" on the floor for the children to follow, and keep the other set (and the matching animal cards) for the children to use as "detective keys" to identify who left the tracks!

Free printable patriotic American crafts for US holiday history lesson plans

Several US national holidays center on patriotic events in American history--Memorial Day, Flag Day, 4th of July, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Election Day, Constitution Day and Presidents Day. So here are free printable patriotic crafts and red white and blue crafts and art projects. These free printable activities might easily be used as lesson plans for school or homeschool to teach American history, government, civics, social studies, geography, current events, US history and other similar classes.

All Crafts has a blowout of red white and blue crafts projects to use for major US national holidays. Use these free printable patriotic crafts for US national holidays like Memorial Day and 4th of July but also for lesson plans on Presidents Day, Constitution Day or even Election Day. 

Pecuniarities has a cute free printable toy soldiers crafts, perfect for Presidents Day and military holidays and US national holidays. Print toy soldiers, cut them out, wrap around toilet paper tubes and glue. Free Kids Crafts offers free printable patriotic crafts, games, activities, puzzles, paper dolls and paper airplanes. Use these for American history or Presidents Day activities!


The Toymaker has free printable patriotic crafts, red white and blue crafts and American history art projects. Making Friends always has lots of great crafts, including free printable patriotic crafts and RWB activities. You'll like the games,puzzles and mazes for US national holidays too. 

Teacher Vision has a bunch of educational free printable patriotic crafts. DL-TK has a loads of free printable red white and blue crafts and art projects and patriotic crafts for American history and US national holidays. Activity Village has free printable red white and blue crafts and art projects for all US national holidays. Here's the Presidents Day page but check the side menu and home page for season by season holiday activities.

Free Printable Leaf Identification, Tree Identification Charts

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 activities showing location and region of different types of trees. Scroll down to find the region and tree type you are looking for. Here's a free printable tree and leaf matching game. Print as coloring pages of leaves. Here are websites with free printable fall leaf patterns for autumn crafts. Here are free printable leaf stencils for decorations and children's activities.

Groundhog Day lesson planner, activities and free printables

Groundhog Day, February 2, is kind of a silly holiday but it breaks up the monotony of winter. It's a good time to teach lesson plans on animal hibernation, calendar, seasons and other science facts. A-Z Teacher Stuff has a collection of free printable Groundhog Day worksheets and activities.

Use groundhog themed lesson plans to teach earth's orbit around the sun, length of days, calendar skills, math, sorting, graphing, writing and counting. Preschool kids love it when teachers incorporate holiday themes into lesson plans. Use free printable groundhogs worksheets for a booklet of activities. Perhaps it could be used as homework?


Groundhog Day is the homepage of the Punxatawney Phil groundhogs club. There are many cute free printable Groundhog Day worksheets and interactive activities for teachers for Feb. 2. Print cut-outs of groundhogs and explore the science of light and shadows. Make thumbprint groundhogs for arts and crafts. Let kids enjoy coloring pages of groundhogs. For fun hands-on lesson plans, do tracings of groundhogs, which are kind of like shadows. 

Throw a Groundhog Day party for preschool, special needs and younger elementary age kids. Serve "groundhog food"(aka trail mix). Give kids bags with dried cereal, raisins, M&Ms and pretzels. Or set out a veggie tray which rodents would love. Read books about rodents, such as "Hooway for Wodney Wat" and "Francis" the badger stories. 

Chinese New Year party printables, crafts, lesson plans, activities, Year of the Dog party for homeschool families

Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, begins late January or early February on the western calendar. CNY 2015 starts Feb. 19. It's Year of the Sheep or Goat. Here are easy, inexpensive ideas to throw a Chinese New Year festival in a school classroom or at homeschool or with your family. Sheep (goat) themed activities are included.
"Travel" to China. Start at the DL-TK website's for free printable Chinese New Year activities. Read books on China.

Decorate with free printable Chinese crafts., symbols, clipart and graphics to use for decorations. Children can use to make banners, desk decor. Create greeting cards and give to elderly.

Make crafts. Use the free printable CNY activities from the link above. Make Chinese zodiac calendars, lantern crafts (for Lantern Festival), hats, paper dolls, booklets, and a Chinese zodiac wreath. Print CNY recipes, coloring pages, crafts, games with lots of printables.
Learn about animals of the zodiac. The link above has pages of activities devoted to each animal: horse, dog, rat, rooster, dragon, pig, sheep, rabbit, monkey, ox, tiger and snake. There coloring pages, booklets and more.
Host a pageant. Help children create animal costumes from the dress up bin and recycled materials. Got more than 12 students? Do male, female and baby animals (ram-ewe-lamb). This teaches science vocabulary.
Sample Chinese foods. The Chinese New Year theme is luck. Simple kid-friendly treats would be animals crackers (horses), iced tea, fortune cookies, dumplings, spring rolls (egg rolls), cherries, Mandarin oranges and fish crackers.
Play games. Links above have printable puzzles and games. DL-TK link has a printable quilt with a square for each animal. That could be used as a bingo or memory game. In China, children are given lucky gold coins. Get some foil-wrapped gold coins and hide them for kids to find.
Host a Lantern Festival. Use links for ideas, activities and printables. Lantern Festival rounds out the new year activities and is celebrated about two weeks later.

Say "Gong Xi Fa Cai" (Gong Hey Fat Choy") to wish Happy New Year!

Free printable Halloween lesson plans, games, crafts, activities for homeschooling families


Some homeschooling families observe Halloween and others don't. If you do, why not participate educationally. Educators know that when children enjoy something and have fun with a lesson, they learn better. Here are free printable Halloween activities for school classrooms, homeschool or scout troop. Use with old folks in nursing homes or anyone who needs some Halloween printables.
Count down the days to Trick or Treat with dozens of free printable Halloween activities, coloring pages and crafts from Making Friends.com. Print free craft projects for all sorts themes. Making Friends has a really holiday activities, coloring pages, cut and paste, paper dolls, Trick or treat wrappers, worksheets, Halloween puzzles and mazes. Print word searches, crossword puzzles and word games, perfect for Halloween language arts lessons. Print Halloween card games, flash cards, dioramas, masks and pumpkin carving patterns and stencils.
Here free printable Halloween lesson plans, worksheets, games, coloring pages, activities and puzzles. Use for Trick or Treat themed math, reading, writing, literature, science, language, social studies and crafts. All Free Printables has free Halloween crafts, greeting cards, party invitations, decorations, cut-outs, coloring pages, masks, party invitations, name tags, treat bags, pumpkin cut-outs, book marks, picture frames and lots more. Puzzlemaker lets you create templates for printable Halloween worksheets, puzzles, mazes, jigsaws, dot to dot, Soduku, crosswords and activities galore.
Print Activities is another mega site for all your school and family activity printing needs. Look for units, printable worksheets and lessons focused around Halloween and trick-or-treat. Disney Family offers a plethora of free printable Halloween Disney activities, crafts and coloring pages. Coolest Holiday Parties has free printable Halloween party supplies. You'll find cards, invitations, treat and punch bowl printables, banners, place cards, name tags, wall hangings for a ghoulish party.

Free Printable Hidden Pictures Puzzles from Highlights Magazine


Jan. 29 is National Puzzles Day and some of the most enjoyable puzzle games are hidden pictures, like those in Highlights magazine. Remember Highlights magazine with those awesome hidden pictures puzzles? Hidden object picture puzzles have an image with little pictures hidden inside. Here are free printable hidden object picture puzzles from Highlights magazine and other websites. Highlights magazine hidden pictures puzzles are similar to Scholastic I Spy books.
Highlights magazine has about one hundred free printable hidden pictures puzzles from past issues of Highlights magazines. There are all sorts of main images from which to choose. Print in black and white. After children find all the hidden pictures in the puzzles, they can color the picture. All Kids Network has more free printable hidden picture puzzles and Highlights magazine coloring pages.
About Puzzles offers links to an assortment of free printable hidden object picture puzzles, similar to I Spy games. Here are free printable I Spy puzzle games There are connect the dots, mazes, find the difference and hidden pictures. Print a I Spy games and Hidden object picture puzzles booklet for home, classroom, homeschool, rainy day fun, day care and summer enrichment activities. Hidden Pictures build children's visual acuity and help them learn to focus and pay attention. But be careful; I Spy games and hidden pictures games puzzles can become habit forming. You may find your child hiding in his fort totally engrossed in solving hidden object puzzles.

Some kids were lucky to have a Highlights magazine subscription, but others could only do the puzzles at the doctor's office where inevitably some other kid had already circled all the hidden pictures. Print these hidden puzzle pictures and show your children some great puzzle fun. Hidden pictures games make learning fun and interactive. Hidden object picture puzzles make great lesson plan activities for special needs students who often struggle with visual and perceptual skills. For more free printable hidden object picture puzzles and other games visit my blog Free Safe Kids Games.

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