Easy Activities for Your First Weeks

Easy activities for your first weeks include low-prep, engaging lessons and activities that help K-2 teachers build community and routines.

Welcome back, K-2 teachers!  Whether you're setting up your classroom for the very first time or returning for another year, this guide is here to make your back-to-school season a little easier and a lot more exciting. This guide provides ready-to-use options across all subjects. Inside, you'll find ready-to-use resources across every subject that weave in climate and nature themes, because there's no better time to build a love for the natural world than the very first weeks of school. From quick warm-ups to hands-on STEM challenges to phonics games and graphing activities, everything here is designed to engage your youngest learners while helping you build the warm, structured classroom community they need to thrive. These fun back-to-school activities for kids work for multiple grade levels, and several adapt easily as back-to-school preschool activities for your youngest learners.

Grab-and-go activities and printables that are perfect for the first days of school, when you need something engaging that requires little to no prep.

Back to School Activities

This ready-to-use collection of printables and customizable slides includes coloring sheets, signs, poems, writing prompts, and schedule cards to help you set up your classroom, build excitement, create a welcoming environment, and greet students on day one.

Recycle Sorting Game

In this interactive game, students practice sorting everyday items into trash, compost, or recycling bins, building real-world environmental awareness while having fun. It works great as a technology center activity or whole-class warm-up. 

Nature Sights and Sounds

This digital game invites students to explore different ecosystems by matching images and sounds from the natural world. Add it to your list of tablet games in your Technology center. Take your kids on a nature walk to explore the outdoors
firsthand.

What is Climate Change?

This short animated video introduces students to the basics of climate change in simple, age-appropriate terms, explaining what it is and what kids can do to help. An easy way to spark conversations about caring for the planet from day one.

Activities that get students building, creating, and exploring the world with their hands, great for fostering curiosity and classroom community early in the year.

Build a Tree: STEM Challenge

Students design and build their own tree using a variety of materials, then use both standard and nonstandard units of measurement to compare and describe it. It's an open-ended engineering activity with great math connections.

Nature Measurement Activity

Students head outside or explore the classroom to measure, compare, and order objects found in nature, building early math skills through hands-on discovery. This one is easy to set up and runs beautifully as a math center.

Plant Pigment Paint

In this creative science activity, students extract natural pigments from plants and use them to paint, discovering how plants get their colors while expressing themselves artistically. It's a wonderful cross-curricular activity!

Eco Rhythms Music Lesson

This lesson guides students outdoors to listen for rhythms in nature and then create their own musical improvisations inspired by what they hear. Students explore the connections between music, living things, and the environment.

Standards-aligned science and engineering lessons that introduce big ideas about energy, nature, and the environment through inquiry and exploration.

Engineering and Art Lesson

Students learn about engineers, explore wind energy, and then design their own model windmill in this hands-on K-2 lesson. The lesson includes discussion prompts, centers, and writing pages.

Sun Lesson for Kids

In this lesson, students investigate the many ways the sun supports daily life and explore how solar energy can be used as a clean energy source. It's a great entry point into both science and energy.

An Outdoor Adventure

This resource takes learning outside, inviting students to explore the natural world around their school through guided activities. It builds skills such as observation and questioning.

Observing Our Natural World

Students slow down and practice careful observation by exploring their schoolyard or nearby outdoor space, recording what they notice about plants, animals, and seasonal changes. 

Literacy activities and resources that build foundational reading and writing skills while connecting students to nature and environmental themes.

Phonics Game

This interactive phonics game uses nature-themed words and images to help students practice isolating and identifying beginning sounds, making it a fun addition to your literacy centers, whole-group, or small-groups.

Backyard ELA: Printable Bundle

This print-and-go bundle covers a range of foundational literacy skills through nature-themed activities. It includes multiple activity formats, so you can use it for whole-group, small-group, or independent practice.

Response to Reading Pages

This simple, reusable graphic organizer helps students record their thoughts and feelings after reading or listening to a climate-related story and identify the characters and setting. It's helpful during the first weeks of school.

Composting Syllables Worksheet

Students segment and count syllables in compost-themed words using these practice pages, building phonological awareness in a fun, nature-connected context. They work well as a literacy center, bell ringer, or homework activity.

These back to school math activities connect numbers, data, and shapes to the real world through a nature and climate lens.

Backyard Math: Printable Bundle

This bundle provides students with hands-on practice through nature-themed activities. It reinforces skills such as counting, comparing, & patterning. It's a low-prep option that connects math to the outdoors.

Shapes in Nature

Students explore the shapes they can find in the natural world around them, sharpening observation skills while practicing identifying and naming geometric shapes. This works as a group activity paired with center time.

Weather Data & Graphing

Students observe and record daily weather, then graph their findings to build important math and science skills. Data collection can happen during calendar time, morning meeting, or math centers. It fits into your existing routine.

Counting Nature: Math Activity

This hands-on activity uses objects found in nature to count and compare, reinforcing early number sense in a concrete, engaging way. It's perfect for math centers, skill practice and review, outdoor learning time, or homework.