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Activity Guide
Decorative image with the K-8 Guide cover over a forested background.

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.

K-2 3-5 6-8
Activity
Cover of Environmental Quality Investigation activity guide over top of a light green leafy background.

Environmental Quality Investigation

Students investigate areas where improvements can be made in indoor air quality, transportation, chemical use, and more.

6-8 9-12
Activity
Cover of Energy Investigation activity guide over background of solar panels in a field.

Energy Investigation

Students investigate how much energy their school uses, the main sources of that energy, and ways to implement energy-saving strategies.

6-8 9-12
Unit

Learn About Forests

Engage middle school-aged youth in learning about trees, forests, and sustainable forest management with these free ready-to-use activities to engage youth in learning about sustainable forest management.

6-8 9-12
Activity
The cover of the Waste and Recycling Investigation activity over a background of discarded plastic bottles.

Waste & Recycling Investigation

Students investigate how much waste your school generates and where it goes, as well as recycling and composting efforts.

6-8 9-12
Activity
cover of School Site Investigation activity guide over a green background.

School Site Investigation

Students assess their school grounds on the basis of various criteria. Using the data collected from the Investigation, students can develop action projects to improve the school site to make it a more sustainable, healthier, and safer environment.

6-8 9-12
Activity
cover of Water Investigations activity over an image of an underwater view with sunlight.

Water Investigation

Students investigate and evaluate water use in their school and on school grounds and collect data on water conservation practices to develop a school action plan for conserving water.

6-8 9-12
Unit
Cover of Carbon and Climate unit

Carbon & Climate

Designed for 6th-8th grade teachers, the fully online Carbon & Climate E-Unit provides activities and resources to introduce students to some of the complex issues involved in climate change.

6-8
Activity Guide
PreK-8 Activity Guide Cover

PreK-8 Environmental Education

Charting Diversity. Birds and Worms. Pollution Search. These are some of the 96 hands-on interdisciplinary activities found in Project Learning Tree’s PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide.

K-2 3-5 6-8
Activity Guide
cover of PLT's Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers guide over a background of a work with a high visibility vest in the forest

Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers

Help youth discover careers in sustainable forestry and conservation. The Green Jobs: Exploring Forest Careers unit includes four hands-on, NGSS-aligned, instructional activities to help youth research forestry jobs.

9-12
Activity
Woman hug the tree with love

Adopt a Tree

Students select individual trees to observe over time, deepening their awareness of tree changes and developing a greater appreciation for their local environment.

K-2 3-5
Activity
Thermometer Sun 40 Degres. Hot summer day. High Summer temperatures

The Global Climate

Using data collected from Mauna Loa, students graph changes in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) over the course of several decades and identify possible reasons for those changes.

6-8
Activity
A seedlings of pine trees in bucket are ready to planting at a forest plantation. A volunteers are planting the seedlings on a empty forest glade. Shooting at cloudy autumn day

Plant a Tree

Never underestimate the power of a tree! In addition to giving us an amazing array of paper and wood products, trees provide a host of other benefits—from shading our backyards to reducing air pollution to helping stabilize the global climate.

3-5 6-8
Activity
Traces of the emerald ash borer on the trunk of a dead ash in Michigan - like the death sentence for the tree, written under the bark; the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis or Agrilus marcopoli) is a non-native invasive insect from Asia; the green beetle, accidentally introduced by overseas shipping containers into the USA, spread from Michigan through the Midwest and threatens to kill most of the ash trees in North America; shallow DOF

Invasive Species

Throughout history, people have intentionally and unintentionally moved plant and animal species to new environments. Some of these species have proved beneficial, but others invade natural habitats, causing environmental and sometimes economic harm.

6-8
Activity
Group of multi-ethnic people, people with differing abilities , volunteers with garbage bags cleaning park area

Improve Your Place

Every living thing has a habitat—a place that meets its needs. Human beings’ habitat is the community in which they live.

3-5 6-8