Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide
PLT’s new flagship curriculum Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide includes 50 hands-on, multidisciplinary activities to connect children to nature and increase young people’s awareness and knowledge about their environment. Activities include detailed step-by-step instructions, academic correlations, time and material requirements, and corresponding student worksheets with green career connections. This supplementary curriculum is designed to develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Purchase this guide (available in print or as an e-book) from PLT’s Shop and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
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reK-8 Guide
A popular resource for educators of elementary and middle school students, PLT’s PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide includes 96 hands-on, multidisciplinary activities that bring the environment into the classroom, and students into the environment.
Charting Diversity. Birds and Worms. Pollution Search. These are some of the fun, hands-on activities with emphasis on science, reading, writing, mathematics, and social studies that engage students in learning – both outside and indoors. Topics include trees and forests, wildlife, water, air, energy, waste, climate change, invasive species, community planning, and more. Each activity is tailored to specific grade levels and learning objectives and filled with opportunities to build critical thinking skills and differentiated instruction techniques.
To receive the PreK-8 Guide (available in print or as an e-book), attend a Project Learning Tree professional development workshop in your state or purchase the curriculum from our Shop.
Grades K-2:
Sensational Trees
Sensational Trees is a downloadable resource for educators of students in grades K-2 that uses sensory exploration to understand objects, spaces, people and interactions.
Three hands-on activities connect children to nature in the city and the outdoors while integrating core discipline areas, including STEM subjects, reading, writing, and social studies. Students learn to investigate trees and develop a greater appreciation for their local environment. The activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.
Purchase this activity collection from Shop.PLT.org and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Grades K-2:
E-Unit – Treemendous Science!
PLT’s Treemendous Science! e-unit is an invitation to increase the quantity and quality of your K-2 learners’ contact with nature and trees. With Treemendous Science!, students will experience, explore, and collect tree data to develop understandings about how trees grow, the roles trees play in ecosystems, and the ways in which trees and humans interact.
Grades 3-5:
E-Unit – Energy in Ecosystems
With PLT’s Energy in Ecosystems e-unit students focus on forests (one of the largest and most complex types of ecosystems) and come to understand some of the interactions present in all ecosystems. In doing so, they learn to appreciate the natural systems on which we depend and begin to widen their circle of compassion to include all of nature.
Grades 3-5:
Biodiversity Blitz
Biodiversity Blitz is a downloadable resource for educators of students in grades 3-5. It invites learners to investigate variability among species in an ecosystem, and how this variability – or biodiversity – helps sustain life on Earth.
Three hands-on activities, with an emphasis on science, English language arts, math and social studies, engage students in learning about why biodiversity is one of the most important indicators of an ecosystem’s health, and how greater biodiversity means a greater ability to cope with change.
Purchase this activity collection from Shop.PLT.org and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Grades 3-5:
Trillions of Trees
Trillions of Trees is a downloadable resource for educators of students in grades 3-5. It invites young learners to investigate the unique characteristics of different tree species and how best to plan, plant, and care for trees in their community. Three hands-on activities, with an emphasis on STEM subjects, reading, writing, and social studies, engage students to connect children to nature in the city and the outdoors.
Purchase this activity collection from Shop.PLT.org and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Grades 6-8:
E-Unit – Carbon & Climate
Perhaps more than any other environmental issue, the topic of climate change challenges science teachers to accurately convey data, reveal assumptions, and engage critical-thinking skills. Project Learning Tree’s Carbon & Climate e-unit provides activities and resources to help educators meet these challenges, introducing, and educating students to some of the complex issues involved in climate change.
Note: PLT’s e-units are all online. To get this e-curriculum, attend a Project Learning Tree professional development workshop in your state or purchase the e-unit with an accompanying online course from our Shop.
Grades 6-8:
Discover Your Urban Forest
Discover Your Urban Forest is a downloadable resource for educators of students in grades 6-8 that invites learners to explore their urban environment and investigate environmental issues that affect their urban community.
Three hands-on activities, with an emphasis on science and social studies, engage students in learning about the place they live and how we depend on natural systems to sustain us. Students learn to value diverse perspectives about different landscapes whether it is a city sidewalk, an urban forest, or a community park. The activities can be used as individual, stand-alone lessons, or all together as a cohesive unit of instruction using a storyline technique.
Purchase this activity collection from Shop.PLT.org and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Grades 6-8:
Nature of Fire
Nature of Fire is a downloadable resource for educators of students in the grades 6-8 that invites students to investigate wildland fire and ecosystem change. Three hands-on activities, that integrates core discipline areas, including STEM subjects, reading, writing, and social studies. Students learn about the three elements that a fire needs to burn and find out how this “fire triangle” can be used to prevent and manage wildland fires and graph changes in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) over the course of several decades to explore the relationship among CO2, the Earth’s climate, and wildfires, and suggest
ways to reduce negative effects of fire.
Purchase this activity collection from Shop.PLT.org and/or find out about professional development opportunities in your state.
Grades 6-12:
Teaching with i-Tree
PLT’s Teaching with i-Tree unit, designed for use with middle and high school students, includes three hands-on activities that engage students in discovering and analyzing the many ecosystem services that trees provide. Students use the free, online i-Tree Design software – developed by the U.S. Forest Service – to calculate the dollar value of the benefits provided by a tree or a set of trees.
Download Teaching with i-Tree.
Grades 6-16:
Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers
Help youth discover careers in sustainable forestry and conservation! Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers includes four hands-on instructional activities to help youth research forestry jobs, and practice managing and monitoring forest resources. It is designed for educators, career and guidance counselors, Scouts, 4-H, and FFA leaders, foresters, and job training advisors to use with learners aged 12–25.
Learn more and get the guide! Available in print or as an e-book.
Energy & Society
Project Learning Tree’s Energy & Society kit offers K-8 students opportunities to learn about their relationship with energy. The activities develop students’ critical thinking skills to help them make decisions about their personal energy use. In addition to hands-on activities, this curriculum integrates music and dance to enhance the study of energy issues.
To get Energy & Society, attend a Project Learning Tree professional development workshop in your state.
GreenSchools
Engage students in STEM as they investigate their school site, energy use, water, waste and recycling practices. Five investigations empower students to make their schools green and healthy.
Register to access each investigation online, or purchase a print copy of the complete set. Attend an online GreenSchools training for tips on starting a program at your school, how to obtain equipment, collect data, etc.
Family Activities
Nature is a great teacher! Try these activity ideas from Project Learning Tree to connect the children in your life to the outdoors and nature. This printed guide contains a collection of more than 30 fun and easy-to-do activities. Suitable for children ages 3 – 15, some activities work better for younger children, others are more suited for older children. The way you present them will change depending on your child’s knowledge and ability.
Purchase Nature Activities for Families from shop.plt.org.