Spring Word Search

About this puzzle

Spring is the season of small, noticeable changes: a robin on the lawn, buds swelling on the lilac, tadpoles wriggling in the pond, and the first sprout poking up in a garden bed. This puzzle collects those moments in up to 30 words. There are flowers and baby animals, of course, but also the wet and muddy side of the season, with rain boots, umbrellas, and puddles, plus a little science in pollen, thaw, and the equinox.

It fits nicely into a classroom unit on plant life cycles or weather, and the notes under each word give students something to read once they finish. At home it makes a good rainy-afternoon activity or a calm moment before an egg hunt. Younger children can start on easy, and older kids and adults will find the hard level a real test.

The 30 words in this puzzle

Every word, with a short note. Handy for teaching the vocabulary before or after solving.

In every version (12)

Butterfly

Butterflies go through complete metamorphosis: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult. Many species emerge or return in spring as flowers begin to bloom.

Chick

A chick is a baby chicken. A chicken egg takes about 21 days to hatch, and many farms and hatcheries are busiest with new chicks in spring.

Daisy

The name daisy comes from the Old English for day's eye, because the flower opens its petals in the morning and closes them at night.

Garden

Spring is planting time in many gardens. Cool-weather crops like peas, lettuce, and spinach can go in early, while tomatoes wait until the danger of frost has passed.

Kite

Kites fly best in steady winds, which are common in spring. They were invented in China, where they were flying more than two thousand years ago.

Lamb

A lamb is a young sheep, usually under a year old. On many farms most lambs are born in late winter and spring, when fresh grass is coming in.

Nest

Birds build nests to hold eggs and raise their young. Robins shape theirs with mud and grass, using their breast to press the cup into a round shape.

Puddle

A small pool of water on the ground. Puddles evaporate faster on warm, sunny, windy days, which makes them a simple way to show the water cycle.

Rain Boots

Waterproof boots, usually made of rubber. In Britain they are called wellingtons, after the Duke of Wellington, who made a style of leather boot fashionable.

Rainbow

A rainbow forms when sunlight is bent and reflected inside raindrops, splitting into colors. You can only see one with the sun behind you.

Robin

The American robin is a type of thrush. Many robins stay north all winter, but they become much more visible in spring when they pull earthworms from soft lawns.

Tulip

Tulips grow from bulbs planted in fall. They are native to Central Asia and were cultivated in the Ottoman Empire before becoming a craze in the Netherlands in the 1600s.

Added in Medium and Hard (8)

Blossom

A blossom is a flower on a fruit tree or shrub. Apple, cherry, and pear trees bloom in spring, and the flowers must be pollinated for fruit to form.

Daffodil

Daffodils are among the earliest spring flowers. Every part of the plant, especially the bulb, is poisonous, which is why deer and rabbits usually leave them alone.

Duckling

Ducklings are covered in fluffy down and can swim within a day of hatching. A mother duck often leads her ducklings to water in a neat line soon after they leave the nest.

Ladybug

Ladybugs are beetles, not true bugs. Gardeners welcome them in spring because a single ladybug can eat thousands of plant-sucking aphids in its lifetime.

Picnic

Mild spring days bring families outdoors for picnics. The English word comes from the French pique-nique, which was first recorded in the late 1600s.

Sprout

A sprout is a new shoot from a seed or bulb. Seeds sprout when they get enough water, warmth, and oxygen, a process called germination.

Tadpole

A tadpole is the larval stage of a frog or toad. It breathes with gills and swims with a tail until it grows legs and develops lungs.

Umbrella

The word comes from the Latin umbra, meaning shade. Umbrellas were used for sun shade in ancient Egypt, China, and Greece long before they were waterproofed for rain.

Added in Hard (10)

Bumblebee

In spring, a queen bumblebee that survived winter alone starts a new colony. Bumblebees can shiver their flight muscles to warm up and fly on chilly days.

Crocus

Crocuses are among the first flowers of spring and can bloom while snow is still on the ground. The spice saffron comes from the threads of one kind of crocus.

Dandelion

The name comes from the French dent de lion, meaning lion's tooth, after the jagged leaves. Each fluffy seed head holds well over a hundred seeds that float off on the wind.

Earthworm

Earthworms come to the surface after spring rains. As they tunnel, they loosen soil and let air and water reach plant roots, and their castings enrich the soil.

Equinox

The spring, or vernal, equinox falls around March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere. On that day the sun rises nearly due east and sets nearly due west.

Hyacinth

Hyacinths grow from bulbs and bloom in mid-spring with thick spikes of very fragrant flowers in purple, pink, blue, or white.

Lilac

Lilacs are shrubs with fragrant purple, white, or pink flower clusters that bloom in mid to late spring. The lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire.

Pollen

Pollen is a fine powder made by flowers that carries the male cells needed for plants to make seeds. Wind-blown tree pollen is a major cause of spring allergies.

Seedling

A seedling is a young plant that has just sprouted from a seed. Gardeners often start seedlings indoors and move them outside after the last frost.

Thaw

A thaw is when ice and snow melt as temperatures rise above freezing. Spring thaws feed rivers and can cause flooding in low areas.

A few facts to share while you solve

• In 1912, the mayor of Tokyo gave Washington, D.C., about 3,000 cherry trees as a gift of friendship. Their spring bloom now draws huge crowds to the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
• During the Dutch tulip craze of the 1630s, single bulbs of the rarest varieties were reportedly priced as high as a fine house.
• A rainbow is actually a full circle of light. From the ground, the horizon usually blocks the bottom half, so we see only an arch.

Four versions of this puzzle

Pick a version with the buttons above the grid. Each one has its own grid and answer key, and your progress on each is saved separately in this browser.

Hard and large print versions

Hard spring word search: all 30 words on a 16 × 16 grid, hidden forward, backward, up, down and along both diagonals, with filler letters borrowed from the word list. Print it without the word list for an extra challenge. Play the hard version, or see all hard word searches.

Large print spring word search: the 12 most familiar words on a 10 × 10 grid, printed with big letters and a big word list, and no backwards words. Play the large print version, or see all large print word searches.

Printing this word search

Press Print / PDF above the puzzle. You get a clean one-page sheet with the title, the grid, a word list with tick boxes, and optional name and date lines. The answer key prints on a second page. Prefer a file? Download it as a PDF or an image to print later or drop into a worksheet. Whatever version is showing on screen is the one that prints, and the large print version prints with bigger letters.

How to play online

1. Find a word from the list in the grid. Scanning for its first letter is the quickest way.
2. Drag across the word from its first letter to its last. On a phone, you can also tap the first letter, then the last.
3. Found words get highlighted and crossed off. Stuck? Hint circles the first letter of a word you haven’t found.

Read the full guide to solving word searches, with tips that make big grids much faster.