Celebrating National Park Week with Free Lessons
National Park Week is one of my favorite weeks of the year! I weave the parks into every subject I teach throughout the year, but during National Park Week we simply get to celebrate the parks. To make things even easier for you, I have outlined a week’s worth of FREE lessons for you and your students!
National Park Week 2024- April 20-28
Monday
To kick off National Park Week I suggest starting with a history of the parks. In this free activity, students will learn about the important people behind the parks, while focusing on non-fiction text features. This is perfect for your language arts class! Grab it here!
Tuesday
Continue the national park fun in math class! Have students review their addition and subtraction skills with a digital puzzle (for Google Sheets). Students will answer math questions and as they get answers correct a picture of a park will start to be revealed. This particular puzzle includes a picture of Glacier National Park.
Wednesday
One of my favorite resources I have found over the years is a collaboration from Google and the National Park Service. They teamed up to create an interactive adventure for 5 of the parks- Kenai Fjords, Hawaii Volcanoes, Carlsbad Caverns, Bryce Canyon, and Dry Tortugas. They have created 360* views of the park, included video, and it is fully narrated! This is a must try during National Park Week!
(to access the activities, scroll to the bottom and find where it says “Let’s travel to islands, glaciers, and canyons!”)
Thursday
The most visited national park in the US is Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today, have your students learn more about the park through my free reading comprehension unit. This is a weeklong unit, but you can easily pick an activity or two to complete during National Park Week. It includes two reading passages (one fiction and one nonfiction), comprehension questions, graphic organizers, vocabulary study, and more. AND it is both printable and digital!
Friday
Wrap up National Park Week by having students reach a park and fill out what they learned on a pennant. You can grab my free pennants for Denali, Redwood, Haleakala, Acadia, and Zion. Students can use Epic for research- they have TONS of national park books on their site. I’ve even created a collection which you can access here.
There are so many more resources out there to celebrate this special week, so just use these free ones as a jumping off point.
And if you would like to check out all my national park resources you can find them here.
And don’t forget to check the National Park Week website with an outline of all the activities happening each day!
Lastly, if you want to gather virtually with thousands of other national park teachers, check out the Facebook group (I don’t lead the group, but am a proud group member).
