Spring Packet: Animals, Life Cycles, and Eggs – Free Printables
Today I have a free Spring Packet to share with you, plus some fun spring-themed activities like experiments with eggs and making pony-bead lizards and snakes!
We have been reading Trumpet of the Swan (affiliate link) which is a really sweet book about a swan who is mute and wants to learn and better himself (in some pretty surprising ways)!! The book highlights a number of different animals. I made some notebook pages for the girls so they could do their own research about the animals that were mentioned in the novel.
There are notebook pages on the trumpeter swan, mallard, red-winged blackbird, skunk, rabbit, and American robin. There is also a matching page with these animals and their young. ED was pretty proud of the page she did on the trumpeter swan (right)!
The girls also mentioned that they wanted to learn a little bit more about animal life cycles (in particular, DD wanted to learn about the life cycle of the snail!!). There is a page called “Whose Egg?” where the kids had to try to identify what type of egg each picture (or pair of pictures) was. I borrowed a couple of books from the library that also had some really good photos. These are suitable for PreK to Grade 3 or 4 (ED is in grade 3, DD is in grade 6 and we looked through these books together). These are affiliate links:
- Whose Egg Is This This book (below right) has a lot of great photos. It shows a large picture of the egg on one side and four animals to choose from on the other side (with a hint).
- Guess what is Growing Inside This Egg? – These are illustrations. This book explains where the egg is located (on Dad’s feet, in a mound of dirt and sticks, etc.); you then have to guess what type of egg it is.
- Speaking of Eggs… be sure to scroll down below to get the link to our free Egg-Experiment Packet!
In our free Spring Packet, there are also a couple of reference pages with pictures of some life cycles (including the life cycle of the ladybug, mosquito, Monarch butterfly, spider, snail, and snakes.
These kids’ books also help explain the life cycle of some backyard animals (affiliate links):
- Are You a Snail?
- Are You a Ladybug?
- Are You a Butterfly?
- Wiggling Worms at Work
- An Earthworm’s Life
- Diary of a Worm
- Birds Nests and Eggs (Introduces kids to 15 backyard birds including the American Robin, House Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay and others)
- There are some cute, realistic Bug Bookmarks you can check out too… “Fly away with a good book. “Man tis a good book!” 🙂
Our Spring Packet is about 10 pages. It is free to download, just click on the link below. We’d love to hear from you if it comes in handy! ~Liesl
Spring Packet – Whose Egg? Life Cycles, Trumpet of the Swan – Notebook Pages
We have a giant Life Cycles Packet: This 50+ page Life Cycles Packet helps kids become familiar with the different stages in the life cycles of the chicken, sea turtle, frog, mosquito, butterfly, dragonfly, bee, mouse, and ladybug.
If you are interested in doing a unit on frogs, we have some free amphibian materials that highlight some of various types of frogs and salamanders. And there is also a page about the frog life cycle. This is free at this post:
Amphibians-Montessori 3 Part Cards and Frog Life Cycle Lapbook Page
There is also a lapbook piece for the Life Cycle of frogs (or a notebook page if you prefer something larger). Again, head to this post to download these free resources: Amphibians, Frog Life Cycle Notebook (and lapbook) Page
My kids – and my girls in particular – love animals. We did two large units about animals last year. The first unit we did was on animal characteristics (warm blooded, feathers, scales, gills, etc.), classifying animals (vertebrates/invertebrates, the different invertebrate groups), spiders vs. insects, wild vs. domesticated animals, animal tracks, and more. You can learn more about our Animal Packet here:
We also have a BIG Animal BUNDLE available!
Which includes the new Life Cycles Packet
As well as the Rainforest Packet
These Animal Units can each be purchased individually as well. See the Big Animal BUNDLE Page for more!
The second unit we did last year was a Biology Unit on the biosphere, biomes, ecosystems, habitats, animal relationships, the food pyramid and more. This biology unit is more suitable for upper elementary and middle school (the kids were in grades 2, 5, and 7 when we did this unit, though of course, ED participated too. That’s the way homeschooling goes!!)
If your kids are a little bit younger, they might enjoy some of the activities in this post: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs and the free printable there.
One last thing before I go, a couple of years ago we did a ton of Egg Activities right around Easter. This packet has quite a number of fun Egg-tivities… from walking on eggs and squeezing an egg into a bottle to brushing your… egg!! You can download these free Egg Activities — Egg-speriment Packet here.
Here’s another fun projects. When my kids were younger, they really loved making snake and lizards out of pony beads. There are instructions at this post: How to Make Pony-Bead Snakes and Lizards (and it’s free to download.)
Frogs, Snakes, Turtles, Mice and Other Critters in our Backyard! I know many of us live in different parts of the country and the world. This post has photos of some of the critters in our area: Backyard Nature and this post from a few years ago also highlights some of the different reptiles and amphibians we have living near the creek that run through our yard: All That Crazy Rain. This post has pictures of a Mama Mouse and her babies that we found in our garden one year.
Free Skip Counting Mazes: And on a spring-related note, we have a new set of free Skip Counting Mazes (spring butterfly theme) that you might want to check out! 🙂
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.
See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts. Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well. 
~Liesl
