Browse

Science Worksheets for 3rd Graders

4 strands4 ready to print93 worksheetsUS Letter PDFs

Weather and climate, natural hazards, inherited traits, life cycles, fossils, adaptations and food chains, forces, motion and magnets, and engineering design.

The science year, in order

From weather and climate to living things, forces and engineering, in an order many 3rd grade classes follow. Each strand links to its worksheets.

  1. Weather, climate and hazards

    23 sheets ready

    Weather or climate, weather tools and data, temperature and rain graphs, climate zones, and designs that reduce the damage from weather hazards.

    Weather and climate

    Tell weather from climate, read weather tools and data tables, make and read bar graphs, compare climates and label Earth’s climate zones.

    14 worksheets

    Natural hazards

    Learn weather-related hazards, match designs that reduce their impact, judge solutions with test data and design a shake-proof tower.

    9 worksheets

  2. Living things

    44 sheets ready

    Life cycles and metamorphosis, inherited traits and the environment, fossils, adaptations and survival, animal groups and food chains.

    Life cycles

    Order the stages of butterfly, frog and bean plant life cycles, compare complete and incomplete metamorphosis, and see what all life cycles share.

    10 worksheets

    Inherited traits

    Sort inherited traits from learned behaviors, read trait data from a dog family, and see how the environment can change traits.

    10 worksheets

    Fossils

    How fossils form, the main kinds of fossils, reading rock layers, and using fossils as clues to living things and environments of long ago.

    8 worksheets

    Adaptations

    Body parts and behaviors that help living things survive, habitats where they survive best, variation and camouflage, and animals that live in groups.

    8 worksheets

    Food chains

    Read and build food chains, sort producers, consumers and decomposers, find predators and prey, and follow the energy from the sun.

    8 worksheets

  3. Forces and interactions

    19 sheets ready

    Balanced and unbalanced forces, friction and gravity, patterns of motion, magnets and static electricity.

    Forces and motion

    Pushes and pulls, balanced and unbalanced forces, friction and gravity, and using patterns of motion to predict what happens next.

    8 worksheets

    Magnets and static electricity

    Magnet worksheets for kindergarten: a line-art poster, a magnetic or not sort, a predict-and-test record sheet and a count-the-paper-clips page.

    11 worksheets

  4. Engineering design

    7 sheets ready

    The design process, criteria and constraints, fair tests and comparing designs with data.

    Engineering design process

    The steps engineers follow, criteria and constraints, fair tests, comparing designs with data, and a planner for any building challenge.

    7 worksheets

About science worksheets for 3rd graders

Third grade science asks bigger questions. Why is one city hot and dry while another is cold and snowy? Why does a puppy look like its mother? How did sea shells end up on a mountain? What makes a box start to move, and how can a magnet pull without touching?

These science worksheets for 3rd graders follow four strands. Earth pages cover weather and climate, climate zones and natural hazards. Life science pages cover life cycles, inherited traits and the environment, fossils, adaptations, animal groups and food chains. Physical science pages cover balanced and unbalanced forces, patterns of motion, magnets and static electricity. Engineering pages teach the design process, criteria and constraints and fair tests.

Children read data tables and bar graphs, make claims with evidence and build and test their own designs. Every page is black and white, prints on US Letter or A4, and pages with right answers have an answer key on page 2.

Questions

What science do 3rd graders learn?

Most 3rd grade science covers weather and climate and how people reduce the damage from weather hazards; life cycles, inherited traits, fossils, adaptations and how living things survive; forces, motion and magnets; and the engineering design process.

Do these worksheets need special materials?

Most pages need only a pencil. Investigations use simple things like a toy car and a ramp, magnets and paper clips, a washer on a string, bean seeds, paper, straws and pennies.

Do the pages use real data?

Many do: monthly temperatures and climate data for real U.S. cities are rounded long-term averages. Other data sets are made up for practice and say so.

Are there answer keys?

Yes. Every page with right answers has an answer key on page 2. Posters, vocabulary cards, planners and design challenges have no key.