Featured Products

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.
Collection
Connecting for Health and the Planet Cover

Connecting for Health and Planet

For educators of students in grades 3-5, Connecting for Health and Planet invites learners to investigate how being outside—and among trees, specifically—provides people with many different physical, emotional, social, and learning benefits.
Collection
Together for Birds Activity Collection

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.
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.

Sample Activities

backyard safari activity thumbnail

Backyard Safari (Grades K-2)

This hands-on activity helps students in grades K-2 observe habitats nearby - whether it's the school playground, a local park, or their backyard. Students will go outside, look for signs of animal life, and consider how animals in their area get food, water, and shelter.

Get Backyard Safari
charting biodiversity sample activity thumbnail

Charting Biodiversity (Grades 3-5)

This hands-on activity helps students in grades 3-5 understand why there are so many different species and teaches them the value of biodiversity. Students will learn how animals in different environments have adapted to where they live.

Get Charting Biodiversity
Field forest and stream sample activity thumbnail

Field, Forest, and Stream (Grades 6-8)

This hands-on activity helps students in grades 6-8 understand how sunlight, soil moisture, temperature, wind, and water flow influence living elements in an ecosystem.

Get Field, Forest & Stream
Young female student measuring plant

Connect to Academic Standards

PLT activities are aligned to state and national academic standards, including Common Core, NGSS, C3, and Head Start.

Standards Correlations
Young teen examining the tree stem through with magnifying glass.

Hands-On STEM Strategies

Integrate nature-based learning into your science, technology, engineering, and math lessons with these ideas for PLT activities.

Integrate STEM
Girl's hands picking leaves compares leaf to pictures in a book.

Multidisciplinary Activities

Our fun, hands-on lessons for all grade levels make teaching and learning fun, no matter the class subject or setting!

find-activities

PLT Materials are Adaptable for Any Setting and Environment

A man and young children examine tree branches on the ground

Youth Groups and After School

Many PLT activities are designed to work with nonformal settings and audiences, including after-school programs and youth groups. Programs such as 4-H, Scouts, homeschool, museums, nature centers, and many more, offer nonformal education.

Boy exploring nature and counting annual growth tree rings on a big log in nature. He is pensive and worried

Forest Literacy

PLT’s Forest Literacy Framework translates the language of forests and sustainable forest management into concepts for any age. It’s perfect for teachers and forestry professionals seeking guidance on how to connect youth to forests.

Adult and kids exploring in park

Resources to Learn About Nature

Explore nature with your friends, family, and community. When children spend time outside it can improve their creativity and imagination, classroom performance, and health.

All PLT Products for Grades K-8

Collection

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.
Unit
3 young girls examine pine needles outdoors

Treemendous Science!

For grades K-2. In this E-Unit students explore and collect tree data to develop an understanding of how trees grow, the roles trees play in ecosystems, and the ways in which trees and humans interact.
Unit
A chipmunk eating a berry on a tree branch

Energy in Ecosystems

For grades 3-5. 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.
Collection

Trillions of Trees

Trillion of Trees is a downloadable activity collection for grades 3-5 that 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.

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.

Collection

Discover Your Urban Forest

Encourage learners to investigate environmental issues that affect their urban community. By inspiring youth to learn about the place they live, these activities help students better understand how the world works and what sustains them.
Collection

Nature of Fire

Nature of Fire features three PLT activities for educators of students in grades 6-8 about sustainable forest management and strategies to reduce catastrophic wildfire, ensure resilient forests, maintain forests, and restore degraded lands.
Activity Guide
Cover of GreenSchool Investigations cover over a background of trees

GreenSchools Investigations

Learn about the benefits of becoming a GreenSchool and how to form a Green Team and obtain equipment. Get suggestions for how students might conduct the investigations and why, and tips for collecting data.

Front view of caucasian teacher and multi ethnic students reading book while sitting on brick wall at corridor in school

Bring PLT to Your District

We offer training for educators and high-quality education materials for whole-school or districts.

“School-wide implementation of PLT is the very best thing we’ve ever done. Test scores went up and continue to go up. It became a model for the rest of the district. PLT far surpassed my expectations.” – Former Principal, New Hampshire

Bring PLT to Your District