John McMillan

Salmon School

Salmon School

Want to learn more about wild salmon? Check out all our salmon educational materials, including illustrations, coloring book pages, quizzes, fun facts and games.

Looking for the COP26 Salmon School art exhibit? Check out our article Salmon Take the Stage at U.N. Climate Conference or go direct to thesalmonschool.com.

Photographs of Joseph Rossano’s Salmon School installation (C.B. Bell Media).

Color me salmon

Use as many colors as you want – go wild! Send us a picture of your work of art and we’ll share it on our salmon art wall

Did you know that hundreds of species rely on salmon as a source of food? There are over 130 in the Pacific Northwest alone. See how many species you can find in this interactive Wild Salmon Center keystone species mosaic

Download the jpeg above or click here for a pdf version.

Check out the whole collection of salmonidae family tree illustrations from Guido Rahr: Pacific salmon, Pacific trout, brown trout, char, the mighty salmon-eating beast – taimen and other wildlife below. In addition to being Wild Salmon Center’s president, Guido is also quite the artist (and a mighty fine fly tier). Click on the image you want then right click to save to your computer and print.

For more coloring pages, check out the illustrations from Alaska’s Salmon Sisters and the Confluence Collective pages below. Not all of them are of salmon, but they were just so darn beautiful we couldn’t help ourselves. 


Sitka Conservation Society has made a Fin-Tastic Activity Packet as part of their release of the new film “The Salmon Forest” (streaming free on YouTube). The activity packet contains a coloring page as well as worksheets where you can learn more about the life cycle of a salmon, create your own food web, and see how salmon are an important part of the Southeast Alaskan way of life (download the packet).


Get inspired with this salmon-themed Russian alphabet primer (download pdf). No Russian skills required to enjoy great art, and you might even be able to guess a few or the English words if you’re lucky.  But watch out, those Cyrillic letters can be tricky!

See if you can find the following: salmon, Oncorhynchus, pink salmon, sockeye salmon, chum salmon, taimen, kype/hook, protected area, driftnet, poaching, seal, life cycle, roe, nest, embryo/egg, alevin, smolt, juvenile, range, migration, homing, factory, ornament. Find all the answers and the story of how the primer was made here.


Salmon Fun Facts

Test your salmon IQ with our true and false quiz (download pdf). You can also try your wit with this crossword puzzle from Watershed Watch.


What will I look like when I grow up? See if you can match the juvenile salmon in column one with its adult sea-run and spawning versions (download pdf). Get some help from our Pacific salmon species pages.


Learn more about the salmon life cycle (download pdf) and Pacific salmon species history, range and abundance.

Interactive Games

Salmon Challenge: Keep your salmon alive! Guide your salmon upstream to spawn and help them make important decisions and avoid dangerous obstacles along the way. In Salmon Challenges you can choose from a sockeye, Chinook or steelhead and see how many survive the journey. Thanks to the Smithsonian for creating this super fun and informative online game!

Created by the Smithsonian National Museum of the Native American

Watershed CPR Education Program. With two distinct learning tracks, there are opportunities for students of all ages to increase their knowledge about the Fraser Watershed. From the wildlife that lives within it, to the environmental threats the watershed faces, learn how you can help. 

Created by the Rivershed Society of BC in partnership with with Canadian Geographic Education.

Have an idea for a fun salmon game? Send them our way! Email us at info at wildsalmoncenter.org.