The eleven youngest students started the year learning about the Rain Forest. New concepts and vocabulary were introduced as they listened to and discussed the content of many books on the subject. If I Ran the Rain Forest by Bonnie Worth and Rain, Rain, Rain Forest by Brenda Guiberson helped the children learn about the five layers of the rain forest and we identified animals and plants found in the five layers of the forest. Watching Magic School Bus in the Rain Forest helped us learn how interconnected the animals and plants are as we followed Miss Frizzle and her class as they solved the mystery of why the harvest of cocoa beans had dropped precipitously. The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry helped us learn about the importance of protecting the rain forests of the world. Children self-selected an animal or plant to research. They drew their animals or plant, found out about its food chain, and identified the layer of the forest this animal or plant could be found in. During Investigations all the children helped create a large three-dimensional replica of the rain forest. Once finished this playworld will provide many weeks of imaginative play.

We tried to rent Miss Frizzle’s bus for our field trip to the Zoo. This field trip gave the children an opportunity to observe, up close, many animals (pythons, monkeys, bats, frogs and macaws) that live in the rain forest. We learned which continents these animals came from. Back at school children were given a map of the world and had to identify where the rain forests are located. In the process they learned that all tropical rain forests are located near the equator.

Next the children will learn about a very different biome – grasslands.