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Inspire young people connect with the environment through hands-on, multidisciplinary
activities for all
grades, settings and subject levels
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- k-2
Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide
Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide offers educators a wide variety of engaging, hands-on activities, organized into grade bands, K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 about trees and forests, wildlife, water, climate change, stewardship, and more.
Together for Birds
Together for Birds invites students to investigate ways that birds and other living things depend on their habitat to live. It is designed for educators of students in grades K-2, with variations for grades 3-5.
Trees & Me: Activities for Exploring Nature with Young Children
Trees & Me has hundreds of ideas for fun outdoor and indoor activities to connect children to nature, trees, and forests. Children explore nature through their senses, experience trees throughout all four seasons, and connect with their community.
Seeds to Trees Pocket Guide
The Pocket Guide connects children to nature through sensory experiences. It includes four hands-on experiences to do with children in groups up to eight, plus preparation instructions, material and time requirements, and directions.
Picture a Tree
Students draw a picture of tree from memory. As they explore trees close up through the other unit activities, they will draw new pictures and compare them with the original pictures they drew.
Environmental Experiences for Early Childhood
Bring nature into the classroom and safely take young learners outdoors, whether you live in an urban, suburban, or rural community. Encourages children ages 3 to 6 to explore, discover and communicate in expressive ways with over 130 experiences.
Habitat Pen Pals
Students learn about the diversity of habitats in their state and write letters from the perspective of organisms living in those habitats.
Schoolyard Safari
Students look for signs of animals living in and around trees in the schoolyard, observing how a tree can serve as a habitat or as one part of habitat.
Trees as Habitats
Students inventory the plants and animals that live in, on, and around trees and discover how plants and animals depend on trees in many ways.
Get in Touch with Trees
Students explore the parts of a tree through mystery boxes, a blindfolded walk, and by sorting different leaves. This activity sharpens observation skills and descriptive vocabulary of trees and tree parts.
Bursting Buds
Students observe leaf buds over time to see what happens as the tiny, bright green leaves burst forth.
Every Tree for Itself
This simulation helps students model and understand the conditions that trees need to live and grow.
Signs of Fall
Students observe signs of autumn and gather data about trees on or near the school site as fall approaches.
Adopt a Tree
By “adopting” a tree and observing it over time, students practice their observation skills, look for patterns, and develop a personal connection to the adopted tree.
To Be a Tree
Students create a model tree costume, which helps them gain a deeper understanding of the form and function of the basic tree parts. This activity serves as an initial exploration into tree growth and provides a foundation for more observations.