Activities for The Great Big Green Week
This year we’re supporting The Great Big Green Week once again to inspire pupils to learn more about climate change.
What is The Great Big Green Week?
The Great Big Green Week is an annual event, which celebrates action against climate change. It is run by the Climate Coalition and this year takes place between the 7th and 15th June.
At the heart of the campaign is the concept of ‘swapping together for good’. Its aim is to encourage people to consider the choices they are making with a view to potentially choosing alternatives that are better for the environment. Swaps can be anything. Schools may move from gas to solar energy for their heating needs; families could decide to sell clothes they’ve finished with instead of sending them to landfill.
To support the event and help you teach about climate change, Busy Things:
a) has created a free activity pack, which:
- provides information about the week,
- highlights climate change issues in the Amazon and the UK,
- looks at burning coal to create electricity,
- considers consumer choices and their impact on climate change, and
- invites your pupils to think about how we can tackle the climate crisis.
Access your free activity pack here!
b) is making some of its games free to play. These specially selected games can be found below and can be played by simply clicking on their links. Games will load automatically without you needing to take a trial or subscribe.
What can you do for The Great Big Green Week?
Busy Things has some great climate change resources, which it’s developed with The Climate Coalition. Below you’ll find a selection of them:
Climate change – The issues
Our Climate change around the world (Jigsaws) activity, which looks at Bangladesh, Africa, areas with rainforest, island nations and the UK, is great for giving children a quick summary of the issues that climate change is causing globally.
The completed jigsaw below is the one focusing on the rainforest. The children are given pieces to create the picture, and once done, the facts appear to provide the background information.
Climate change – What could a swap be?
Swap idea 1: Walk instead of using the car for certain journeys
Petrol and diesel cars emit carbon dioxide in their exhaust fumes, so contribute to climate change.
By walking, you’d be lowering the CO2 emissions.
If everyone decided to walk locally instead of driving, the impact would be huge!
Swap idea 2: Choose renewable energy sources to power your school
As of 2019, just 10% of the UK’s electricity was generated using renewable sources.
Play our Generating green electricity jigsaw activity here to reveal those sources. Complete the jigsaws to reveal facts about each.
Would changing to any of them be possible for your school?
Swap idea 3: Swap wasted outdoor space for a bio-diverse area dedicated to wildlife
Do you have an area at school that is just wasteland?
Perhaps you could plant some trees in it to reduce CO2. Or encourage wildflowers to grow there to boost its biodiversity.
Swap idea 4: Swap one cooked dinner option for a plant-based one
Being vegan is better for the planet because cultivating plants requires less energy and produces fewer emissions than rearing animals.
Do your pupils know which foods are vegan and which not? Why not sort them as a group on the whiteboard?
You’ll find the activity here.
Your pupils might also want to look at reducing their family’s carbon footprint. Take a look at our climate change activity ideas page for ideas!
And if we don’t make changes?
For climate change to be reversed, swaps do need to be made somewhere, but what if we carry on as we are?
This is where Busy Things’ simulator game, Tree World, comes into its own as children can build houses, keep warm by the fire and eat a meat-based diet as we traditionally have, and see the environmental disasters like storms and forest fires unfold.
Alternatively, they can make swaps like the ones discussed above, live more sustainably and see how the the Beeples, Berbs and the planet as a whole live in harmony and safety.
Summary
We hope this blog and its activities help you to explore climate change with your pupils, appreciate its full impact and think about what we can all do to improve the situation. We’d love it if you took advantage of our free-to-play activities (Climate change around the world jigsaw, Generating green electricity, Vegan or non-vegan and Tree World) and FREE paper-based topical pack for The Great Big Green Week.
If you’d like to access our climate change activities (and activities in other areas of the curriculum too!), we’d be happy to offer you a 28-day free trial. Simply click here to get yourself a login!
This blog post was updated in May 2025.