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.
Students investigate how much energy their school uses, the main sources of that energy, and ways to implement energy-saving strategies.
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.
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.
Students explore the environmental, social, and economic criteria of forest certification and consider possible benefits and limitations of certification for both forests and people.
Students model what happens to renewable and nonrenewable resources over time and discover why sustainable use of natural resources is so important.
By examining trash, students can learn a lot about how and why they throw things away. Students find ways to reduce their community’s waste production and improve its management through participation in a service-learning project.
Students play the role of forest manager for a 400-acre (162-hectare) public forest, exploring the complex factors that influence management decisions about forest lands.
Students gain an appreciation for how many natural resources they depend on in their day-to-day lives. By tracing the resources that go into making one item, students learn how its manufacturing can have an impact on the environment.
The energy we use at home, school, or work enhances our lives, but it also often contributes to air and water pollution, wildlife and habitat loss, and climate change.