Archaeology Vocabulary word search, scramble and crossword puzzle

Archaeology Vocabulary word search, scramble and crossword puzzle

I made this archaeology puzzle set for my 3rd and 4th graders during our ancient civilizations unit. The kids were fascinated by the idea of digging up the past and finding lost cities, but they had no idea what words like artifact, excavation, or ruins meant when we started talking about how archaeologists learn about ancient peoples . They also kept mixing up terms like "site" and "dig" and couldn't explain what a grid was for. So I put together a word search, a word scramble, and a crossword using basic archaeological vocabulary: archaeology, excavation, site, artifact, fossil, ruin, grid, stratum, trowel, brush, map, dating, radiocarbon, museum, and preservation.

The PDF is four pages. Three puzzles plus one answer key page. The word search works well for quiet time after recess. The scramble gets them talking because they argue about the spelling of "excavation" or whether a fossil and an artifact are the same thing (they're not — artifacts are human-made objects, fossils are remains of living things, and the kids always have opinions about it). The crossword I use for partners or as a review, and I usually have a picture of an excavation site with a grid, a trowel, and a brush nearby for the kids who need the visual support to see what these things actually look like.

Works for 3rd through 5th grade. Print and go. Sometimes I have early finishers draw an archaeologist's tool kit on the back and label each tool. The kids actually ask for these now.