Make your teacher wish list eco-friendly by adding these books that focus on ways students of all ages can help take care of our environment. Books are categorized by grade level and each set of books provides easy habits students can start doing to protect our natural resources. Check out the list below and make sure to browse the Take Care of Texas Resources page for more activities and lesson plans that can be used in conjunction with these epic reads! 

With the start of a new school year many teachers are getting their lesson plans ready and starting to make copies for those first day of school activities. However, what if those teachers had alternatives to making those copies, thus saving paper and helping the environment? Let’s look at some ways educators can cut back on paper copies, while still engaging students. 
 

When a scout earns the Take Care of Texas pin, we love sharing that news with you. This time, it’s especially unique because two sets of sibling scouts earned their awards together!

Summertime is a wonderful time to catch up on some reading with your children and family. But what happens when you have read everything in your house? Well, a fun and helpful way to get new books and upcycle your old ones is to build a shared library. You may have heard of Little Free Library, a non-profit organization that is focused on expanding book access to communities around the world. It has a global network of volunteer-led libraries, and once you finish building your own, you can register and add it to that same network!

Resources to extend learning all summer long!

Science lessons can become a conduit for rich scientific discussions at any level of learning, but what happens when we allow collaborative strategies to guide and enhance those discussions?

Back to school is a great time for kids to learn practical ways to take care of the environment. Here are some ideas to help make your education experience more sustainable.

Your students probably think of summer as the time to stay up late, goof around with friends, ride bikes in the neighborhood, and play video games.  And yes, it is all those things! But summer doesn’t have to mean that they can’t keep learning about the environment. In fact, summer poses some unique learning opportunities that they wouldn’t get any other time of the year. Below are some ideas you can suggest to your students to try and engage in when they're ready to get outside.  

Rivers are an important natural resource in Texas. They're not only essential natural habitats for many species of plants and animals, but they also provide a significant portion of the state with water and irrigation for agriculture. Learn about what makes the Rio Grande so special by watching our video, available in both English and Spanish. We also have a bilingual handout available for download so that students of both languages can follow along and complete an engaging activity after the video. 

Nature-deficit disorder is a term you may have heard in recent years. It’s the relatively new idea that people, children in particular, who spend less time in nature may suffer a range of physical, psychological, and behavioral problems. The phrase can be summed up as the cost we pay for distancing ourselves from nature.