Celebrate CCEW 2026 with AACT Resources!
By AACT on April 16, 2026
To promote the positive role that chemistry plays in the world, ACS established the Chemists Celebrate Earth Week (CCEW) public awareness campaign. During CCEW, ACS members and chemistry enthusiasts celebrate by coordinating events and communicating the importance of chemistry.
The 2026 CCEW theme is "Trees and Forests: Into the Woods with Chemistry" During the week of April 19-25, celebrate this theme with your students using teaching resources from AACT! In the list below, you'll find a new forest-themed resource developed by AACT, as well as a number of other resources and articles from the resource library that relate to the theme.
New Resource:
- Combustion Reactions and Wildfires: In this lesson, students are introduced to the chemistry of combustion reactions through the lens of wildfires. They will observe several combustion reactions and identify some common chemical species involved. They are then led through some hints for writing and balancing chemical equations for combustion reactions.
High School Resources:
- Project: Sustainable Energy Evaluation
- Lab: Effect of Salt Concentration on Plants
- Lesson: Isolation of Phytochrome
Middle School Resources:
- Lesson: Investigating Photosynthesis
- Lesson: The Building Blocks of Photosynthesis
- Lab: The Chemical Process of Photosynthesis
- Lab: Candy and Leaf Chromatography
Elementary School Resources:
- Activity: Sunshine for Life
- Lab: Mini Terrarium
- Lesson: Plant Chemistry
- Lab: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle!
- Lab: The pH of Soil
- Lab: Soil Permeability
ChemMatters:
The April 2026 issue is all about forests - read more in Forests: Where Chemistry Grows!
Other forest-related articles:
- Beyond Glass: Making Wood Transparent
- Leaves of Three, Let it Be: The Itchy Chemistry of Poison Ivy
- Copying Nature to Fight Climate Change
- Celebrating Paper!
- Battling Wildfires: When Water Won't Cut It
- Rainforests: A Disappearing Act
- Maple Syrup: Sweet Sap Boils Down to This
More Earth Day Content:
- Visit the Educational Resources section of the CCEW website to find many more engaging forest-related activities for K-12 students!
- And for more resources to help discover the many types of chemistry taking place on our wonderful planet (not just its forests), check out this news post for additional AACT resources to celebrate Earth Day!