For our second week of supplement-to-virtual learning or SVL, I chose the rainforest. I don’t seem to have enough anacronyms in my world, so I thought I would just throw another one out there. I love learning about the rainforest, though. It must be so beautiful. I’m sure that it is but can’t say with any certainty because I have never seen any part of a rainforest. I would like to one day. It fascinates me. So many species of plants, insects, and mammals, not to mention the trees. I feel like you could really have an Indiana Jones-like adventure in the rainforest. Or possibly find a door to Narnia. Of course, you could also encounter a poison arrow frog, Bengal tiger, green anaconda, or fall into a river and be greeted by piranhas. Perhaps you would stumble upon a brand-new species of spider and get to name it? By stumble, I mean you walked right into a web and got bitten. Unfortunately, for you, turns out the spider was highly venomous and ultimately you succumbed to its toxins. Like I said, brand new. The scientific community greatly appreciates your contribution and all that will, of course be on the plaque at the zoo for others to read if, and when they catch one of these guys. If you survive your adventure; however, there are still so many ways the rainforest will likely have a daily impact on you. Coffee anyone? As you leisurely sit by the pool in your teak lounge chair enjoying your morning brew and breakfast consisting of grapefruit and avocado toast, just know that your morning was brought to you courtesy of the rainforest. Fast forward to snack time. Perhaps you’re whipping up some fruit smoothies. Bananas? Mangos? Or maybe you’re making something delicious for dessert. You’ll probably need sugar, vanilla and cocoa. The fabulous dinner you’re making probably requires some spices like chili powder, cinnamon, ginger or black pepper. In fact, I think it is more of a challenge to go a day without using rainforest resources of some kind.
A couple of things about this week. We tried to stick to our schedule below each day as best we could. I’ve included that outline so you can see how we juggled each boy’s zoom calls. That way, you can see the basic plan we followed. While my oldest was doing his zoom call, my little one did various activities while he waited on his own class to start. Sometimes he worked on concepts from a previous day. He also used his Osmo app to practice making his letters. It has hands on games for pre-K children and the app gives them feedback. I have included the link to the starter kit we have below. For each day, I’ve just included the different rainforest activities as well as any other fun things we did. I also wanted to incorporate some reading each day for a couple of reasons. I’ve got some reading goals, which you know if you’ve read any of my posts about goals at the start of the year. With a first grader (now second-grader!) and a pre-K little one, I wanted to give them a chance at practicing reading to encourage good habits on a regular basis. Just know we read about three books a day and I have included some of those as well.
Osmo – Little Genius Starter Kit for iPad
Daily Schedule
8:00-9:00-Get up, brush teeth, and eat breakfast. Practice memory verse for the week and review verse from last week.
9:00-9:30 -Big brother has his zoom call.
9:30-10:00-Activity (varies per day)
10:00-11:00-Little brother has a zoom call and while he works on his activity, big brother completes his assignments.
11:00-11:30-Rainforest Activity
11:30-12:00-Recess Outside/Play game inside
12:00-12:30-Reading
12:30: LUNCH!
All about the Rainforest!
Monday:
On our first day, we started off with the story of David and Goliath. I love the story of the boy everyone seemed to overlook who had the heart of a lion. He came to greet his older brothers on the field of battle and overheard the threats and taunts of one of the largest warriors of the Philistine army. No one in the entire Israeli army was willing to accept the challenge to face him. But David. The youngest son of Jesse who had taken a break from tending sheep. He was not even able to wear the king’s armor as he faced the giant. It was too big and cumbersome. So, he walks out to meet the warrior and in response to Goliath’s heckling, he says the following, which is one of my favorite verses,
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” 1 Samuel 17:45
Seems like the guy God describes as being ‘after his own heart’ was able to cut to the heart of the matter.
We read the story in The Jesus Storybook Bible and actually made our own sling shots. Grab some good, sturdy sticks with a ‘y’ shape at one end. You also need a piece of fabric or leather and rubber bands. Then, cut a hole in the fabric or leather so you can attach your rubber bands. Take a rubber band and attach one end to one ‘y’ side of your stick and attach the other side to the fabric. Repeat on the other side, go find some stones to shoot and have fun! You may need to lay down some ground rules like ‘no aiming at windows or siblings…or mom for that matter.’
Introduce the Rainforest
For our rainforest activity, we got an introduction to our theme for the week and started making our own rainforest books. To kick things off, we watched the Sci Show Kids Rainforest video below.
Video: Meet the Rainforest
The plan was to add a page each day with something that we learned. I grabbed some plain white card stock and stapled five pages together along the left side for each of the boys. For our first day, we made our title page. Each of the boys picked an image to color in the middle. Then they added their names at the bottom. As I have mentioned before, they love art, so this was a fun way to enforce our learning all week and for my pre-K and first grader, it was great writing practice. Graham chose a toucan bird and Wood chose a cobra. Honestly, I wasn’t sure where cobras live, but it turns out there are forest cobras that live in tropical and subtropical regions of west and central Africa. We learned a lot this week! For recess, we played outside, doing a little freeze tag and a little sling-shot warfare.
Tuesday:
On our second day, during our activity time, we introduced some chores. I tried emphasizing the concept of getting our space ready for learning. We picked up any toys that were left out and went upstairs and practiced making our beds. Again, I was hoping to instill some good habits and the boys were actually proud of their accomplishment and of being a ‘help to mommy.’ It is super cute when they try to help with anything. I just have to let go of my need to do things a certain way and let them participate. Moms, you know what I am talking about. How many cute pics have you gotten of your little ones sitting in the laundry basket playing with the clothes they were ‘helping’ you fold. Priceless.
Layers of the Rainforest
On day two of rainforest week, we learned about the different layers. We started with the videos below so they could listen and see examples of each layer including the various temperatures, plants and wildlife available from top to bottom. Both are very short. For page one in our books, the boys added a page titled, “Layers of the Rainforest.” They wrote the layers and gave an example either with words or pictures of what you might find in each one. I admit, I knew the rainforests were rich in terms of biodiversity, but I had no idea how unique each layer was. We also made our own canopy. We pulled some chairs together and laid a sheet across them. Then, we got to have story time in the canopy. We have a book about predators that my son got at the book fair. It’s full of terrifyingly interesting facts and it usually launches into some pretend play, as in, “hey, mom, I think there’s a tiger stalking us.” King Jack and the Dragon is a cute book about little boys playing in a fort so it’s also a great option for canopy reading. Recess was all about the snakes. Small-ish plastic toy snakes, of course. What kind of mother do you think I am? We have one of those assorted packs of 24 so I just divided them up into two piles outside. The boys had to race from a certain point to grab the snakes and bring them back one at a time. Exercise, racing, and snakes. What’s not to love? Snake relay was a hit.
Videos:
Wednesday:
This was one of my favorite days, not only because we learned about some amazing animals, but we dressed the part. We talked about all kinds of animals as well as their unique features that help them blend in with their environment to stay alive. The boys and I got up and got dressed, in our camo. After that, it was hard to find them, but once I did, I made them some breakfast and we pressed on with our day. While Wood was doing his zoom call, we played the ABC game with Graham. Based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it is a cute way to reinforce uppercase and lowercase letters.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Spin & Seek ABC Game
Animals of the Rainforest
We huddled up at the computer to take a look at this article on the Rainforest Alliance website: 11 Amazing Rainforest Animals.
This article is a good length for kids and has a great variety of different animals. We enjoyed learning about each one and at the end, I asked the boys to tell me their favorite and why. We discussed the fact that the rainforest has so many species of animals that many of them have developed ways to avoid predators like using camouflage and mimicry. What does that mean? We went over these definitions: Camouflage is a way of masking your appearance, location, and movement. Mimicry is a way of imitating someone or something in appearance, sounds, movements or even smells. To provide examples of this, we looked up images of the different animals and insects below. Check out each one using the links. If only the autumn leaves in our area were ‘walking leaves.’ They could just keep walking right out of my yard. No raking or blowing necessary.
Page two of our books was dedicated to these amazing rainforest animals. The boys each chose an animal to draw. Graham chose a jaguar and Wood chose a crocodile. For another rainforest activity, we decided to learn some more Spanish. If you click the link below, you can pull up the Spanish Playground site. Scroll down to the section called “Rainforest Activities for Spanish Learners” and click on the link for thematic unit on the rainforest. You can select the “El Bosque Tropical” unit with 13 different lesson plans and it is a free download from Google Drive. From there you can pick from all sorts of activities and new vocabulary all focused on the rainforest.
Amamos la selva tropical!
Rainforest Activities in Spanish – Spanish Playground
Recess is sometimes indoors and if you have weather issues or just want to do something different, I recommend the Guess in 10 game. I have mentioned it before as a game any age can play, and it provides some extra animal-focused fun. You get some clue words and then have 10 questions you can ask to see if you can guess the animal on the card.
We rounded out this day of rainforest animal fun by reading some classic books that included some of our favorites. Stellaluna is a sweet story about a baby bat. The Rainbow Fish is about learning to be generous, and Pet the Cat and the Bedtime Blues introduces us to Pete’s cool animal friends at his slumber party. Bats, cats, crocs, frogs and fish make these stories very rainforest relevant.
Thursday:
I kicked off day four with a little review and reinforcement of chores. While Wood was zooming, we pulled out our calendar and discussed the month, day and weather with Graham. I am providing a link again to the one we use. You can hang it up somewhere and it helps little ones visually with grasping these concepts. Check it out here: Deluxe Calendar Pocket Chart. It is also a good time to review things learned on previous days and practice recall. What are their favorite facts so far about the rainforest? We also reviewed our Bible story from Monday to see what they remembered. Why not do a re-enactment? That would be fun with your sling shots as long as no one gets hurt. Remember, no aiming at windows or siblings.
Where in the world are rainforests?
Our rainforest activity today was to get oriented with our maps as we learned a bit about the types of rainforests and where they can be found in the world. I don’t know about you, but my first grader (at the time) and my pre-K little one’s geography skills are as good as their room-cleaning skills. “That’s clean now right mom?” “Sure, babe, and Mexico is a state. I think what you meant to say, is New Mexico, and how about you take another pass at the room cleaning activity?” Needless to say, introducing geography was a good idea. We started with the article below that gave a brief description of the types of different rainforests and their locations. As we reviewed the article, we stopped to find the different areas on the map. It was both enlightening and hysterical. Clearly geography needed to be a regular segment on this SVL channel. The boys chose a rainforest area from the map to add as the next page in their books. For recess, we played a game called, ‘please, Mr. Crocodile’ outside. The kids line up across the yard from the crocodile, each wearing a different color. They shout, “please, Mr. Crocodile, may we cross the river?” The crocodile says, no, of course and then they ask what the crocodile’s favorite color is. Anyone wearing that color is safe to cross and anyone else is fair game. If a player gets caught, they are the crocodile for the next round and so on.
Friday
Friday was all about some food and fun! We could have just added some folks, gone to McDonald’s, and called it a day, but that would not have been very rainforest focused. While Wood was facetiming his classmates, Graham worked on some cool rainforest coloring pages. We saved some for Wood so he wouldn’t miss out on the fun. I’ve included the link below to some free downloadable coloring sheets that are theme-based. Print off some rainforest pages and enjoy making your own picture with your little ones. Then, you can practice your Spanish and try to name the animals. For the last page in your books, you can attach a coloring page or let the kids pick something they want to highlight from the entire week. We also made a list of items that are found in the rainforest and I let the kids use this as a scavenger hunt in our house. They went looking for the items and marked them off as they found them. It was pretty adorable watching them climb up in chairs to search various cabinets for things. Here’s a tip: Follow behind them because seven and four-year-old’s don’t close the refrigerator completely sometimes. Anyway, we had fun hunting those items down and it certainly made us all think about how much we get from our rainforests. Let’s hear if for avocados! Who are we kidding? Let’s hear it for chocolate!
Rainforest animals coloring page
All that hunting for food made us hungry, so we stayed in the kitchen to make some rainforest cookies. I got the recipe from the link below. They are packed with ingredients that come from the rainforest. These cookies were definitely different and somewhat healthy, or so I told myself. We did leave out the coconut given that we have zero coconut fans, but we had lots of fun measuring our ingredients and making our special treat.
For recess, we headed outside for a homemade game of tails. The homemade part were the adorable dinosaur tails that we still have leftover from my son’s third birthday party. My mother-in-law made them, and we have enjoyed them for 5 years. They have cute little Velcro waist bands, so the kids just put them on, pretend to be dinosaurs and have a blast. For this game, we ran around trying to grab each other’s tails. If your tail comes off, you’re out. We rounded out our day by reading some cute books about getting crazy in the kitchen since we could now relate after the rainforest cookie experience. Check them out here: Whopper Cake and The Seven Silly Eaters. I also have some additional resources for other books and a puzzle below. For the U.S. puzzle map, you can locate the areas of our country that have rainforests as you learn the states. The other books are great to read along with the rainforest theme.
Additional resources:
National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia
I hope you have enjoyed our rainforest adventure! I certainly hope it at least gives you some ideas in case you find yourself either wanting to do some fun themed activities or, like me, you just need to add some additional structure once your kids have finished virtual learning. I certainly learned a lot. As beautiful as the pictures make it look, with tigers, snakes, poisonous frogs and bird-eating tarantulas, I’m not sure any layer is safe, unless of course, Indiana Jones is with me.
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