Winter-Themed STEM Activities
The cold winter season provides many opportunities to add fun and interesting STEM activities to your lesson plans. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Resources for Lessons
STEM: Visit a Place Where
What measurable effect does a visit to a favorite park or green space have on you? These STEM enrichment ideas for one of PLT’s popular activities will take your students outdoors to learn more about a local park or open space near them, and how they might conduct a scientific research experiment to determine the ways in which being outside can improve a person’s mood, health, and wellness.
What Happens to Trees that Fall in the Forest
In dying, a tree plays an essential role in sustaining life around it. Here are some classroom activities to explore decomposition and how a fallen tree provides for other life in the forest.
Virtual Makeover: Sounds Around
Learn how to adapt our “Sounds Around” student activity for remote instruction, allowing students to tune in to the everyday sounds of nature from home or a nearby outdoor space.
Spider-Inspired Classroom Activities for Halloween
Are you ready to add some spooky science to your fall lesson plans? We have gathered a whole cauldron of creepy, crawly spider science activities to enhance your lessons. Try these 11 Halloween activities inspired by our eight-legged friends. Examine spider webs outdoors, build a spider habitat, consider how a spider would adapt to life in space, and more!
Where’s Rodney?
Rodney can’t seem to sit still. At school, he is always more interested in what is happening outside the window than what is going on inside the classroom. Learn how a park visit can transform Rodney’s perspective. Use this text to explore learning styles and personal characteristics with young readers.
Virtual Makeover: Looking at Leaves
Many PLT activities are easily adapted to virtual learning, as we illustrate in this new monthly feature in the Branch. Check out this adaptation for Looking at Leaves from Colorado’s PLT Coordinator
STEM: Pollution Search
When you hear the word “pollution,” what type of pollution do you think about? Knowing the characteristics of each of the five types of pollution, and what you can do to reduce the amounts, can make a positive difference for the environment.
Online Green Jobs Personality Quiz Helps Students Chart Their Future
Our new interactive quiz allows youth to answer a few simple questions online and get recommendations for a rewarding green career path that might suit their personality. Educators can try a no-cost version of the quiz to discover how easy it is to administer to youth.
6 Ways to Celebrate National Pollinator Week
From planting native flowers, learning about plant-animal mutualism, and even building bat houses, there are so many hands-on ways for students of all ages to help promote and protect our pollinators.