What do we call the lazy, hot stretch of midsummer, named long ago after a bright star that rises with the sun?

The dog days (after the star Sirius).

Seasonal & Holidays

Summer Word Search

This summer word search hides words like beach, sunshine, swim to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy summer vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

Seasonal & Holidays

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

WATERMELON
SANDCASTLE
SUNGLASSES
SUNSHINE
POPSICLE
SEASHELL
VACATION
LEMONADE
BEACH
SWIM

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

A four-year-old's lemonade

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania

In 2000, four-year-old Alexandra Scott of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, was fighting cancer when she told her mother she wanted to set up a lemonade stand. The money, she said, would go to doctors to help other sick children. That first summer stand raised about two thousand dollars. Word spread, and people across the country began holding lemonade stands in her name. Alex kept hers going every summer, even as her illness grew worse. By the time she died at age eight, her stands and supporters had raised more than a million dollars. The foundation her family built in her memory has since funded well over a thousand childhood cancer research grants.

Sunrise at the old stones

Amesbury, England

Each year near June 21, thousands of people gather at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain near Amesbury, England, to watch the sun rise on the longest day. They come in darkness and wait, and as dawn breaks the sun climbs directly behind the Heel Stone, sending light straight down the monument's central avenue. The stones were raised about five thousand years ago, and the builders set them deliberately to frame the midsummer sunrise. Druids, photographers, and curious families stand together in the cold morning air. The gathering is free and peaceful, a quiet reminder that people have marked the turning of the seasons here for thousands of years.

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Did you know?

beach: Hawaii's Punaluu has jet-black sand made of cooled lava, while the Bahamas' Pink Sands Beach blushes from tiny red-shelled sea creatures.
sunshine: Sunlight you see left the sun about eight minutes earlier, traveling 93 million miles before warming your skin.
swim: Humans float more easily in the Dead Sea than anywhere else, because its water is nearly ten times saltier than the ocean.
popsicle: The popsicle was invented by accident in 1905 by 11-year-old Frank Epperson, who left a soda and stir stick out overnight.
watermelon: The heaviest watermelon ever grown weighed about 350 pounds, raised by Chris Kent in Sevierville, Tennessee, in 2013.
sandcastle: The tallest sandcastle on record rose about 21 meters in Blokhus, Denmark, in 2021, built from nearly 5,000 tons of sand.
seashell: A seashell is a snail or clam's old home, grown one ring at a time from minerals the animal pulls from seawater.
sunglasses: Inuit people carved the first snow goggles from bone and wood, cutting thin slits to block blinding glare off the ice.
vacation: The word vacation comes from a Latin root meaning empty or free, the idea of leaving your duties vacant for a while.
lemonade: Lemonade may be over 800 years old; medieval Egyptians along the Nile bottled and sold a sweet lemon drink called qatarmizat.
picnic: The word picnic comes from French, and early picnics were potluck parties where every guest brought a dish to share.
surfboard: Early Hawaiian surfboards were carved from solid wood and could weigh more than 150 pounds, far heavier than today's foam ones.
flipflops: Thong sandals are ancient: Egyptians wove them from papyrus around 4,000 BCE, and King Tut was buried with pairs of them.
sunscreen: Chemist Franz Greiter made an early sunscreen in 1946 after a bad sunburn climbing the Alpine peak called Piz Buin.

Trivia

In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, falls around which date?
Around June 21.
Earth is actually farthest from the sun in July, an event with a name. What is that point in the orbit called?
Aphelion.
What do we call the lazy, hot stretch of midsummer, named long ago after a bright star that rises with the sun?
The dog days (after the star Sirius).
Which vitamin does your skin make when sunlight touches it?
Vitamin D.
A rainbow appears when sunlight passes through what in the air?
Water droplets (rain).

Trivia · 1 / 5

In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, falls around which date?

Around June 21.

In their words

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Henry James

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus

Is this summer word search free to print?

This summer word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like WATERMELON, SANDCASTLE, SUNGLASSES 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.

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