Free Fossils Basic Skills Worksheets for grades 3–5. A fossil footprint and a fossil tooth answer different questions. This set helps students name those differences, follow preservation processes, and use rock layers to build careful explanations of past life.
Download the free Fossils worksheets
This six-page packet includes two teacher-guide pages, three student worksheets and an 18-point answer key. Students practice 16 tasks: matching, fill-in, classifying cases, multiple choice and explaining evidence. Print the three student pages; keep the guide and key for instruction. No kit or purchase is required.
Meet Dinoling
Gemlings teach science through their personalities and home realms. Dinoling guides learners in Lostbone Jungle. The character’s teaching note introduces the science mission, and the final encouragement recognizes the student’s learning.
Science topics
- What Fossils Are
- How Fossils Form
- Types of Fossils
- Rock Layers & Relative Time
- Reconstructing Past Life
- Fossils & Earth's Changing Story
Simple classroom use
Allow about 20–30 minutes or split the work across lessons. Model the toolbox words and read the case cards aloud when helpful. Students match clues, complete ideas, classify cases and explain evidence. Use the answer key to discuss corrections; accept accurate explanations in a child’s own words. Tasks 1–14 earn one point each and tasks 15–16 earn up to two each.
Give partners two imaginary museum labels: preserved shell and preserved trackway. Ask what each label tells them about a body or an activity. Revisit the labels when students reach the reconstruction lesson and separate observations from inferences.
A science teaching tip
Fossils are not limited to dinosaurs, and most organisms never fossilize. The oldest-on-the-bottom rule needs undisturbed sedimentary layers; it is not a shortcut for every outcrop.
Train, refresh, then assess
Start with free subject vocabulary training or the free subject reading resource. After worksheet practice, open the subject Adventure page to watch the Gemling video for learning or a refresh, then take the free Online Adventure assessment. The worksheet score is classroom practice, separate from that assessment.
Optional hands-on discovery
Dig Kits can extend Discover–Identify–Collect: uncover specimens, identify them using observations and available specimen/trading cards, and organize a collection. Free worksheets and Online Adventures stand on their own. Teachers may purchase available kits, explore the Free Dig Kits campaign, or ask about possible PTA/PTO funding. Signup does not automatically guarantee free kits; current funding and fulfillment conditions apply. PTA/PTO funding is not guaranteed.
Explore Free Dig Kits for your classroom
More free science resources
Earth Science Basic Skills collection: 12 subjects, 72 printable pages · Browse the free resource library
Rocks & Minerals reading · Landforms reading · Animals reading