We had a such a wonderful time learning and exploring the uniqueness of the rainforest! The week began with reading books about the rainforest, showing pictures and watching videos to enhance our understanding of the rainforest and the animals that live there. The hippos began making a rainforest out of our arch by cutting out leaves to add to the trees and making vines by cutting yarn and scrunching paper. The students also added materials to a diorama showing the 4 layers of the rainforest. After the diorama was completed we brought in the little rainforest animals for pretend play! Our arch contained rainforest animals, an animal rainforest hunt, binoculars, magnifying glasses, and a view finder showing rainforest animals. All of these activities provided opportunities to share, take turns, make decisions, answer and ask questions, create, work on fine motor, and build community.
During center time this week, we made parrots and tree frogs. We also enjoyed vine painting and making lizards with a variety of materials. The students sorted farm and rainforest animals and also made trees with buttons and pipe cleaners! Our sensory table contained coffee grounds, lizards, frogs, tongs and scoopers. Coffee comes from the rainforest and so does chocolate. At the playdoh table we used broccoli stalks to represent tall trees in the rainforest. The students placed rainforest animals under the trees. In addition, the hippos counted frogs to the correct number on the lily pads in water and made jaguars out of the letter J. In gym class we did rainforest animal movements. (learning goals this week: answering questions, fine and gross motor, making decisions independently, taking turns, participating as a member of a group, following 2 step directions, sensory, respectful behavior, counting, number recognition, comparing numbers, sorting)
Since we are done with our letters in the HWOT program, we are now focusing on recognizing and writing numbers.
Books We Read:
Rainforest
Red Eyed Tree Frog
Flashy Frogs
Way Up High In a Tall Green Tree
Questions
1. Who is the most dangerous animal in the rainforest, a jaguar or a monkey?
2. Where does coffee and chocolate come from? ( the rainforest)
3. How does the tree frogs use their red eyes? ( to scare off other animals)
4. When do tree frogs sleep, during the day or at night? (day)
5. How many layers are in the rainforest? (4)
6. What is the weather like in the rainforest? (very rainy)
7. Name an animal in the rainforest. (sloth, howler monkey, jaguar, leaf cutter ants, frogs, lizards, snakes, toucans, parrots, lemur, butterflies, orangutang, to name a few)
Things to Do at Home
Find out more information about the rainforest through books, pictures and the internet.
Next Week:
More Rainforest!
Dates To Remember:
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| We patterned rainforest animals. |
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| Our sensory table contained coffee, lizards, cups and tongs. |
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| Show and Tell |
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| Show and Tell |
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| We decided to use sidewalk chalk on our rainy morning. |
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| Music with Ms. Monica. |
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We colored the frog's legs with paint sticks.
We then glued it to the body. |
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| We cut out the head of our jaguar. |
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| A brother and sister stopped by our class. |
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| Here is our robot bulletin board. |
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| Look at those rainforest animals. |
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| Jumping frogs. |
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| We decorated parrots with paint daubers and feathers. |
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We used a bunch of materials to decorate the rainforest
diorama. |
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| We cut out big leaves for the tree on our arch. |
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| The students loved going on a rainforest hunt. |
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| The hippos used teamwork to put this rainforest picture together. |
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We had many rainforest stuffed animals in our dramatic
play area. |
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| We practiced positional concepts with frogs. |
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| We had fun painting our tree frogs. |
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| Rainforest coloring. |
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| Counting frogs on the correct lily pad. |
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| We sorted rainforest and farm animals. |
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| We put buttons on these pipe cleaner trees. |
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| We painted Foil Bots. |
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| We also finished our other robots. |
