Renewable & Nonrenewable Resources Teaching Resources

Teach your students all about renewable and nonrenewable resources this school year with printable worksheets, activities, vocabulary guides and more created by teachers for your elementary science lessons.

Aligned to the NGSS, this collection of teaching resources has been created with differentiated options and editable versions to make your lesson plans easier to create and save you time! Each resource in this collection has been thoroughly reviewed by a member of the Teach Starter teacher team to ensure it's ready for your lesson planning and your students.

New to teaching this section of the elementary science curriculum or looking for fresh ideas to explain the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources and why these are so important? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

What Are Natural Resources? A Kid-Friendly Definition

In order to explain renewable and nonrenewable and the differences between them, students first need to understand what it means to have a natural resource. Here's a natural resources definition to share with your students:

Natural resources are materials or substances that are naturally occurring in the environment and are valuable to humans for their economic, environmental, or cultural benefits. These resources are generally classified into two categories — renewable and nonrenewable resources.

What Is a Renewable Resource?

Need a kid-friendly way to explain this concept? Try this one: A renewable resource is a natural resource that we can use over and over again without running out. It's sort of like having a cookie jar that never runs out of cookies. Only in this case, the "cookies" provide the energy we need for things like heating our homes and running the electrical items in our schools.

Sometimes renewable resources will be regenerated naturally, while others require human intervention (for example, tree planting replenishes the supply of wood but requires people to do some work!).

What Are Some Examples of Renewable Resources?

Some examples of renewable resources include:

Sun — The sun is one of the most abundant renewable resources in the US, and it is used to create energy with the help of solar panels.
Wind — Wind turbines harness this renewable resource, generating electricity as gusts of wind move through them.
Water — Hydroelectric dams are often used to create energy with this renewable resource.

What Is a Non-Renewable Resource? A Kid-Friendly Definition

As the prefix "non" would indicate, nonrenewable resources are essentially the opposite of the renewable type. These natural resources used to create energy cannot be easily replenished or replaced.

Some may be used up entirely over time, and once they're gone, they will be gone for good. Others may come back, but the time it takes to come back is so long that it won't happen for thousands or even millions of years, which means we will run out too quickly.

Many nonrenewable resources create other issues, such as the harm that burning fossil fuels represents to the environment. Nonrenewable resources are often considered unsustainable, and their use is a major contributor to environmental degradation, climate change, and other global issues.

What Are Some Examples of Nonrenewable Resources?

Some examples of nonrenewable resources that you can share with your students include:

Fossil fuels — Nonrenewable fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are used for electricity and heat but would take millions of years to regenerate.
Minerals — Gold, silver and copper are all minerals that are mined for use in electronics, jewelry and more, but they won't just replenish naturally.

Renewable Energy vs. Non-Renewable Energy — What's the Difference?

Many of the resources we have are tied to the energy we use to power our houses, our cars and more. We classify these energy types as either renewable energy or non-renewable energy.

So what's the difference? Let's look at a breakdown you can share with students.