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.
Biodiversity Blitz, part of PLT’s themed series for educators, features three grades 3-5 activities that invite learners to investigate species variability in an ecosystem, and how this variability – or biodiversity – helps sustain life on Earth.
Students select individual trees to observe over time, deepening their awareness of tree changes and developing a greater appreciation for their local environment.
Students model what happens to renewable and nonrenewable resources over time and discover why sustainable use of natural resources is so important.
Trees come in many shapes and sizes. Students become familiar with tree structure and scale by using different methods to measure them and by making comparisons. They learn the importance of standardized measurements and proper measuring techniques.
Students learn about the three elements a fire needs to burn and find out how this “fire triangle” can be used to prevent and manage wildland fires, particularly in the wildland–urban interface.
Students conduct a field study of three different environments as they focus on sunlight, soil moisture, temperature, wind, water flow, plants, and animals in each environment.
Tree species can be identified by looking at several different features: leaves, bark, twigs, flowers, fruit, and seeds. Even the overall shape of a tree can give clues to the tree’s identity.
By modeling the parts of a tree and creating a “tree factory,” students will learn about the structure of a tree.
Tree rings show patterns of change in the tree’s life, as well as changes in the area where it grows. Students will trace environmental and historical changes using a cross-section of a tree.