Minnesota Department of Natural Resoures
Getting to Know Trees
Celebrate the beauty of trees with a packet full of activities designed to help kindergarteners get to know about their leafy nature friends. Covering a variety of subjects, scholars go on a nature hike, read Shel Silverstein's The...
Curriculum Corner
Coniferous and Deciduous Trees
What are the differences between coniferous and deciduous trees? Supplement your tree lessons with a set of activities that has learners describing, naming, comparing, and reading about deciduous and coniferous trees. The activities are...
Minnesota Department of Natural Resoures
Tree Life
The life of a tree is the focus of a packet consisting of several activities all covering a different subject. Second graders measure shadows, make pinecone critters, write poems, count rings, complete a word search, play tree tag, and...
Curated OER
Fall Lesson Plans
Students participate in various fall activities. In this fall lesson, students take a trip to a farmers market and purchase the ingredients needed for vegetable soup. Students paint fall scenes and create a fall story. Students discuss...
Curated OER
Tree Cookies
Students identify heartwood, sapwood, and a tree's annual rings, infer from a tree's rings what damage or stress might have occurred in its life, and make a time-line of human history that coincides with a tree's rings.
Core Knowledge Foundation
Cycles in Nature Tell It Again!™ Read-Aloud Anthology
A read-aloud anthology offers stories all about nature's life cycles. Over three weeks, second graders listen to and discuss tales about the cycles of daytime, nighttime, seasons, plants, trees, frogs, butterflies, and water. Following...
Curated OER
Can You Hear a Tree Fall in Space?
How does sound travel in space? Fifth graders investigate this question with a science activity, in which they research the properties of sound. Schedule a lab visit for individual Internet research, or include the activity after you...
Curated OER
Create a Community Tree Tour
Students study tree identification. In this tree identification activity, students design and assemble a tree tour booklet describing 5 trees found in their community. The booklet should feature common and Latin names of the species, a...
Curated OER
Fall Leaves Fall
Students explore fall leaves. In this leaf lesson, students collect leaves to investigate. Students also measure, compare and contrast, draw and look at leaves through a magnifying glass. Students sing songs and use movement in this...
Curated OER
Get to Know Trees
Students recognize the characteristics of trees by using their five senses. In this trees instructional activity, students observe and record the characteristics of trees on a field trip. Students then are blindfolded and use their...
Curated OER
Fall is All Around Us
Young scholars develop and create a production company and produce a fall event that demonstrates what they have learned in various subject areas. STudents create stories, complete a venn diagram comparing fall and summer, graph and...
Curated OER
Autumn Arrays
Autumn is a time for nature to get ready for the upcoming winter. After listening to the book Time to Sleep about the changes of deciduous trees in the fall, learners monitor a tree on a daily basis and view photos of fall...
Curated OER
Observing Trees
Learners create a timeline of a tree in a given time span. In this life cycle lesson, students observe one particular tree at the beginning of the year, and continue their observations for several weeks to create a timeline of the...
University of Florida
Unhealthy Forests and the News
Everyone knows a tree makes a sound when it falls, but what do we know about dying trees? Class members learn background information about Laurel wilt disease from a teacher-led presentation. Team members work with partners to read and...
Curated OER
Bursting Blooms- Create an Early Spring
Students prune a tree. In this gardening lesson, students select a shrub or tree that has a lot of flower buds and use sharp pruners to cut sections of branches. Students place the cuttings into cool water and move into a...
US Apple Association
Apples: A Class Act! (Grades Pre-K–3)
Discover the nutritional wonders of apples and get to know Johnny Appleseed with a plethora of learning experiences that cover subjects math, history, English language arts, health, and arts and crafts. Activities include an apple...
Curated OER
Fall Slumbers
Students observe changes in a selected tree leaf near their homes during the fall. Twice each week students record changes in the leaf using words, pictures, and numbers.
Virginia Department of Education
Weather Patterns and Seasonal Changes
Get your class outside to observe their surroundings with a lesson highlighting weather patterns and seasonal changes. First, learners take a weather walk to survey how the weather affects animals, people, plants, and trees during...
Curated OER
Discovering Fall
Young scholars explore the American landscape during fall. After viewing paintings of fall, learners imagine themselves there and what it would be like. They then build an understanding of the painter's use of detail and color...
Curated OER
Tree Identification
In this tree identification activity, students collect samples from different trees and identify them using the deciduous tree guide or the conifer key.
Forest Foundation
Forest Watersheds
Where does the water we use come from? To understand the concept of a watershed, class members study the water cycle and then engage in an activity that simulates a watershed.
Curated OER
Kindergarteners Study the Four Seasons
Examine the weather of the four seasons, look at seasonal activities, and tell which months are part of each season with this lesson. Your class will play a game, sing a song, and write additional stanzas to seasonal poetry.
Curated OER
Fall Literacy Activity: Nuts to you
Students actively listen to the book Nuts To You and learn facts about squirrels. In this squirrels lesson, students listen to the book, and discuss what they learned after.