This fall our kindergarten and first grade students have been learning about habitats. Students have compared woodland forest habitats and rain forest habitats by reading “Once There Was a Bear” by Natalia Romanova and Gennady Spirin,  “At Home in the Rain Forest” by Diane Willow and Laura Jacques and “Nature Cross Sections” by Richard Orr. Students also used their experience at Highland Forest to create their own woodland forest collage. They explored different conifer and deciduous trees we see in woodland forests. Students learned that as scientists, they have to be accurate and only include animals, plants, and trees that exist in the woodland forest habitat in their collages. Students are now building a rain forest habitat model by investigating what animals, plants, and trees exist in each layer of the rain forest. They learned about the rain forest floor, under story, canopy, and emergent layer. They chose animals such as a woolly monkey, armadillo, harpy eagle, toucan, and macaw to write about and present on. When their model of the rain forest is complete, they will classify toy animals that can be found in the rain forest and use them to play with in the rain forest model!