Seasonal & Holidays

Spring Word Search

This spring word search hides words like blossom, rainbow, umbrella to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy spring vocabulary activity.

10 words · 12×12 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

Seasonal & Holidays

Show / hide answers

Tap the first and last letter of a word — or use arrow keys and Enter. Dragging works too.

BUTTERFLY
UMBRELLA
DAFFODIL
SUNSHINE
BLUEBIRD
DUCKLING
RAINCOAT
HYACINTH
BLOSSOM
RAINBOW

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

The town that blooms first

Kawazu, Japan

In Kawazu, on Japan's Izu Peninsula, spring arrives weeks ahead of the rest of the country. The town's cherry trees, a deep pink variety found growing there by chance in the 1950s, open as early as February while most of Japan still waits for late March. About 850 of them line a four kilometer path along the river, and each year a festival draws crowds to walk beneath the early petals. The original tree, spotted as a seedling near the riverbank, still stands and gave its name, Kawazu-zakura, to the whole variety. For a month the small town becomes one of the first places in Japan to feel spring.

Two trees by the water

Washington, United States

On a quiet morning in March 1912, two women knelt by the Tidal Basin in Washington and planted a pair of cherry trees. One was Helen Taft, the First Lady; the other was Viscountess Chinda, wife of Japan's ambassador. The trees were the first of more than three thousand sent as a gift from the mayor of Tokyo, a token of friendship between the two countries. An earlier shipment had arrived diseased and was burned, so this batch was grown with extra care along a Tokyo river. More than a century later their descendants still bloom each spring, drawing crowds to the water's edge.

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Did you know?

blossom: Cherry blossoms open and fall within a week or two, so Japan tracks a moving bloom front north each spring.
rainbow: No two people ever see exactly the same rainbow, because each pair of eyes catches light from its own raindrops.
umbrella: Umbrellas began as sunshades in ancient Egypt and China, used for shade and status long before anyone carried one for rain.
butterfly: A butterfly tastes with its feet, drumming on a leaf to check it is the right plant before laying eggs.
daffodil: Wordsworth's daffodil poem drew on his sister Dorothy's journal, giving a springtime verse roots in someone else's record of their shared walk.
sunshine: Some plants time flowering by uninterrupted darkness, so turning lights on at night can disrupt their response to the season's sunshine.
bluebird: A male eastern bluebird carries nesting bits in and out to attract a mate, then leaves the building work to the female.
duckling: Wood duck ducklings jump from tree nests as high as fifty feet, reaching the ground before they're old enough to fly.
raincoat: The first rubber raincoat, the mackintosh, was made by sandwiching cloth around dissolved rubber in Scotland in the 1820s.
hyacinth: Poet Ovid's hyacinth story gives a flower the letters AI, AI, a Greek cry of grief, turning petals into a written memorial.
tadpole: As a tadpole becomes a frog it reabsorbs its own tail, using the tissue as food during the change.
ladybug: Threatened ladybugs can leak yellow fluid from their leg joints, releasing an unpleasant smell that discourages animals looking for a snack.
greenery: New leaves can start red instead of green, carrying protective pigments while their photosynthetic machinery develops.
caterpillar: Experiments found moths remembering an odor learned as caterpillars, carrying a piece of memory through the animal's dramatic change of body shape.
meadow: Purple snake's-head fritillaries grow in meadows with naturally checkered petals, giving a spring flower an unexpected resemblance to a tiny chessboard.

Trivia

On the spring equinox, day and night are roughly equal everywhere. What does the Latin word equinox mean?
Equal night.
In the Northern Hemisphere, spring usually begins around which date in March?
Around March 20 or 21.
What is the ancient Persian new year festival, celebrated at the spring equinox, called?
Nowruz.
Which colorful Hindu festival, often called the festival of colors, welcomes spring?
Holi.
Tracking when plants bloom and birds return each year is a science with what name?
Phenology.

Trivia · 1 / 5

On the spring equinox, day and night are roughly equal everywhere. What does the Latin word equinox mean?

Equal night.

In their words

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Margaret Atwood

Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Is this spring word search free to print?

This spring word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in a 12×12 grid. Find words like BUTTERFLY, UMBRELLA, DAFFODIL hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

Print this Spring word search