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...
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The Giving Tree
Students explore wants and needs. In this ecology and economics lesson, students listen to the story The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and compile a class list of what the boy got from the tree. Students categorize these items as...
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Introduction to Trees and Wood
Students examine samples from various types of trees. In this trees and wood lesson, students review The Giving Tree and complete a KWL chart on trees. Students brainstorm what we get from trees and view wood samples with hand...
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The Giving Tree
Students investigate the virtue of kindness and giving by conducting a children's literature study of "The Giving Tree". They make a list of words to describe emotions in the story and write a journal daily while looking at the virtues...
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The Gifts of Trees
Students examine the various things trees give us. They read the book, "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein, cook a food using a tree fruit, create notepads using unused paper, construct a picture frame with twigs, and write a poem.
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A Tree is a Tree and a Lot More
Students listen as the teacher reads "The Giving Tree." they discuss all the things the tree gave the boy throughout his life. They discuss ways they benefit from trees. This studying culminates with a tree walk and planting a tree in a...
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Speaking for the Trees
Students present a play based on The Lorax.In this environmental issues lesson, students read and discuss literature and complete activities pertaining to environmental stewardship.
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Plants are Growing and Changing
Students explore living things. In this agriculture lesson, students read the book A Tree is a Plant and participate in an experiment to explore the patterns of change in living things. Students continue to observe the plant throughout...
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Talking Trees
Students investigate the ecosystem. In this environmental lesson, students read the book The Tree by Dana Lyons and list ways to save the trees. Students create a poster about saving the trees.
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A Shredding We Will Go
Students take charge of a recycling project . In this environmental issues lesson, students manage a paper recycling project and use compost made from the recycled paper to beautify trees.
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Talking Trees: Earth Day
Students complete a tree poster activity to learn about Earth Day, stewardship, and the environment. In this environmental stewardship instructional activity, students read The Story of the Tree and discuss stewardship with trees....
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An Apple a Day
Students explore the Johnny Appleseed story. In this service learning lesson, students sequence the life cycle of apple trees and recognize how Johnny Appleseed worked as a philanthropist.
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Go, Johnny, Go!
Young scholars become familiar with the story of Johnny Appleseed by reading, singing and creating a Johnny Appleseed hat. In this Johnny Appleseed instructional activity, students understand that Johnny Appleseed was a philanthropist...
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Tree-mendous Trees
Young scholars become aware of the importance of trees in the natural world. Students are shown 2 filmstrips - Special Things About Trees and Tree Magic. Young scholars plants seeds. They, students predict the growing chart of tree...
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Christmas Around the World
Students 'travel' around the world gathering Christmas traditions. In this Christmas tradition lesson students sing songs, listen to stories and legends, and make crafts associated with different Christmas traditions around the world....
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This Land is Your Land: Volunteering in the Community
Students discover what a Relief Office does. In this volunteer lesson, students investigate what a Relief Office does, and who helps run it. Students discuss ways he/she could become a volunteer.
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The Uses of Trees
Students read and show how to perform leaf rubbing's as a class and individually. Students artistic sides are demonstrated within this instructional activity. Students correlate a variety of learning styles.
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Native American Philanthropists
Pupils demonstrate how Native Americans were philanthropic. In this philanthropy lesson, students read Squanto's Journey and brainstorm ways that the Native Americans were helpful towards the Pilgrims. Pupils reflect on the long-term...
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Giving an Outdoor Play
Students reenact a popular book while using their outdoor playground as the stage. In this dramatic interpretation lesson, students follow oral narration to act out events in a story. They use monkey bars as the setting for the story,...
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Spreading Kindness All Around
Students donate items to organization to demonstrate kindness. In this kindness lesson plan, students read many books and discuss how the characters in each one demonstrate kindness, and then they themselves donate to charities.
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Giving an Outdoor Plan
Students utilize their acting skills to put on an impromptu play based on a book. In this performance art lesson, students read Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina and discuss how the story could be told through human action....
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School Forest Lesson- Looking at Literature
Students compare what they learned though literature to the school forest. In this environment lesson, students visit the forest surrounding their school to listen to literature and identify objects in nature. Students create a...
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Exporing Our Community
Students explore attributes of the community in which they live. They compare rural, urban and suburban communities and attempt to classify their own community. Each group illustrates their assigned area by drawing buildings, trees,...
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Leaf Unit
Students complete a unit on leaves and their functions. They identify leaves and the trees they belong to, read various books, observe the process of photosynthesis on a flannel board, and create a leaf collage.