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Rainforest Sights A Rainforest in Your Classroom Build a rainforest in your classroom with a little imagination and some construction paper. Use tissue paper, paper bags, cardboard and papier-mache to make flowers, insects, animals, birds, and plants. Learn about rainforest layers and place each animal in its forest habitat: • Forest Floor (mostly empty except for tree trunks and leaf litter)—jaguars, ocelots, peccaries, tapirs, coral snakes • Understory (beneath the trees, among the vines, ferns and tree trunks)—monkeys and margays • Canopy (in the tree branches, among the vines, orchids, bromeliads)—sloths and butterflies • Emergent Layer (tops of the tallest rainforest trees, like islands in a sea of green leaves)—toucans and blue morpho butterflies • Rivers and streams—crocodiles and fish. Make cutouts of leaves and hang them from the ceiling and on walls. Create a giant papier-mache tree and hang green and brown crepe-paper vines. Paint murals on kraft paper and attach them to walls with masking tape. Tape a kraft-paper river on your floor and fill it with crocodiles. Borrow a few philodendrons and other house plants. Play a rainforest sounds tape or some appropriate music. Rainforest Animals Watch a video or read a book about rainforest animals. Try Really Wild Animals: Totally Tropical Rain Forest from National Geographic Video. Or some books: • Rainforest Animals by Paul Hess (ages 4 through 6) • Life in the Rainforest: Plants, Animals, and People by Melvin Berger and Geoffrey Brittingham (grades 1 through 3) • Rainforest Animals: With Foldout Rainforest, Natural Habitats edited by Penguin, USA, illustrated by Galante, Boni, and Alderton (ages 7 through 9) • Life in the Rainforests: Animals, Peoples, Plants by Lucy Baker (ages 7 through 12) Ask students to pick a favorite rainforest animal to draw. As a class, write poems and stories about your animals. |
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