For decades, Crayola has partnered with educators to bring creativity to the classroom. We’ve learned that creative teaching helps all students make their thinking visible. Crayola provides educational resources for students, educators, and families. Together, we can transform learning and build engagement, collaboration, and creativity. 

They offer rotating grant funding programs, recycling of crayola products, and education resources.

Resources for Environmental Literacy offers a fresh way to enhance your classroom productivity. The environmental context it provides can improve your students’ science learning even as learning the science improves their ability to deal with five real-world topics:

• Biodiversity
• Genetically modified crops
• Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis
• Global climate change
• Radioactive waste

This resource does not encourage students to take a particular stand on these subjects, but builds skills in critical thinking and analytical reasoning about complex issues.

Measure energy and recycling savings at your school! Empower your students to raise awareness about energy conservation! The Green Cup Challenge™ empowers students, raises awareness about climate change and resource conservation, and unites school communities around a common goal. We invite all K-12 schools to measure and reduce their energy use, improve their recycling and waste reduction programs, and activate student engagement.

The Climate Change in My Backyard curriculum series, designed for students in grades 5-12, integrates student participation in Project BudBurst with NASA climate data to teach about climate change and its consequences for our environment using an earth-systems science approach.

Aligned with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, the curriculum incorporates best practices in inquiry teaching and scaffolds students’ use of science practices to support learning of disciplinary core ideas and connecting cross-cutting concepts.

The series consists of three complete curricula, targeting different age levels—grades 5 to 6, grades 7 to 9, and grades 10 to 12. Each curriculum comprises four units that address critical aspects of a systems approach to understanding climate and its impacts on humans and the environment:

• Understanding the Earth as a system
• Identifying key changing conditions of the earth system
• Recognizing earth-system responses to natural and human-induced changes
• Predicting the consequences of changes for human civilization

This series was developed by the Chicago Botanic Garden with support from NASA and in collaboration with the National Ecological Observatory Network and schools and teachers throughout Illinois.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recently developed a Climate and Health learning module for use in high school classrooms interested in exploring the health impacts of climate change. The module promotes learning about the complex interactions between climate change, the environment, and human health and uses content from the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2016 report, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. The materials are available free of charge and can be adapted for other grades and informal educational settings. The module integrates multiple science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and cross cutting concepts for earth and life sciences. It was designed with Next Generation Science Standards in mind.

We prepare school systems and their communities to educate for a sustainable future by inspiring educators and engaging students through meaningful content and learner-centered instruction. Our work with Pre K-12 schools, school systems, and Higher Education institutions all revolves around the curriculum, instruction and assessment, aspects of Education for Sustainability, as well as organizational and leadership development. To equip students, teachers, and school systems with the new knowledge and ways of thinking we need to achieve economic prosperity and responsible citizenship while restoring the health of the living systems upon which our lives depend.

The Learning Lab online education platform provides K-12 teachers and school leaders with lessons, activities and resources that encourage student leadership, sustainability literacy, and real-world action. Learning Lab offers: 

• Hundreds of lessons across all grade levels and multiple subjects, in English and Spanish
• Links to national standards such as Common Core and Next Gen Science Standards, STEM initiatives, and environmental and sustainability frameworks
• Valuable preparation, sequencing, assessment and extension resources
• Worksheets, PowerPoints, videos and project ideas to connect students to their communities and prepare them for 21st century careers
• A catalog continually updated with content from leading curriculum designers

View full lessons without a subscription here.

National Wildlife Federation offers an ongoing series of live webinars, great for educators and parents looking for ways to engage their kids with nature and conservation.

Our country is full of dazzling landscapes where you can play and learn. They protect our wildlife and resources. They let us look into the past and protect our history. Keeping them public supports a healthy planet.

Workforce and education activities to support the increase of deployed energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. These activities include technology-specific workforce training, career visualization tools, energy education, and energy literacy.

Superhero TurfMutt & the Outdoor Powers teach kids and families backyard science, including how to take better care of the green spaces around them. With the activities in this hands-on science program, you can help them save the planet one yard at a time.

A 4th-grade classroom program to introduce your students to our nation’s natural and historical resources.

Green Up Our Schools is a Boulder based environmental 501 (c) (3) grant program dedicated to reducing elementary school waste by empowering students to lead waste reduction and recycling projects within their school.

The Forest Service’s conservation icon, Woodsy Owl, conservation education resources for young students. Resources available include posters, coloring pages, resource guides, and more. 

This site includes the Natural Inquirer journal for middle and high school students; the Investi-gator journal for upper elementary and middle school students; and Natural Inquirer Readers for grades Pre-K-2, all based on Forest Service scientists’ work. Articles tell about research concerned with nature, trees, wildlife, insects, outdoor activities, water, and more. Students read about a specific research project. Finally, students become scientists when they do the FACTivity.

The USDA Forest Service, Prince William Network, and partners bring nature learning to you through a series of webcasts, webinars, and online education resources. No matter where you are in the world, visit FSNatureLIVE programs for exciting, on-site learning about bats, butterflies, climate change, wetlands, water, and more.

Discover the forests that are right in your neighborhood. Beyond the swings, slides and clearings, there are trails, trees, wildlife and water just waiting for you. Engage your senses, spend some quality family time and expand your imagination with activities, including some from PBS KIDS Plum Landing.

AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA): Public, private, or faith-based nonprofit organizations, as well as, local, state, or federal agencies can become an AmeriCorps VISTA sponsor. AmeriCorps VISTA members spend one year in full-time service to address the needs of low-income communities. All projects focus on building permanent infrastructure in organizations to help them more effectively bring individuals and communities out of poverty. Click here to learn more about how you can host an AmeriCorps VISTA member in your environmental and energy conservation work.

Each year, AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) engages teams of members in projects in communities across the United States. Service projects, which typically last from six to eight weeks, address critical needs related to natural and other disasters, infrastructure improvement, environmental stewardship and conservation, energy conservation, and urban and rural development. Learn more on how you can engage an AmeriCorps NCCC team in your environmental and energy conservation work.

Plum Landing is a PBS KIDS environmental science project, which offers educators and families fun and easy activities to get kids outside and connect to nature. Explore games, activities, and videos online at pbskids.org

Advancing civic learning and democratic engagement in both the U.S. and global contexts by encouraging efforts to make them core expectations for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students—including undergraduate and graduate students.

Join educators around the country discovering new, digital resources to connect students with the environment.

An interactive game available on iOS and Android that educates students on different wildlife habitats.

Nature Explore supports your important efforts to connect children with nature

Dedicated to transforming schoolyards into dynamic centers for teaching & learning, health & fitness, environmental literacy and community life

GEF is calling on schools and groups to join the largest youth gardening initiative. The Green Thumb Challenge aims to connect children with nature and the healthy benefits of gardening as part of a nationwide movement to get kids growing.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.