Rainforest Lapbook

Z-Man's Amazon Rainforest Lapbook:

He is so proud of his work. This is his third lapbook but I think we really need to do more because he is so pleased with the result and every time he shows someone, it's great review for him.

This is what it looks like opened up. The flap that folds up has a labelled map of South America on the other side.

Here are the little booklets opened up - the mammals book on the left has four individual booklets on the jaguar, tamarin, tapir and giant anteater. Each opens for a place to write information about the animal. The layers of the rainforest booklet opens at each layer to write a description. The tree opens at the top to describe the canopy, then the trunk opens in three places for lianas (vines), epiphytes and buttress roots. The booklet on the right shows where the world's rainforests are. The top flap has three frogs with places to write their names and a bromeliad, which actually opens on both sides. He also did a round anaconda book which we forgot to put in! Hmm... maybe it will fit above the layers book.

ALL of these lovely and colorful print-outs are from Homeschool Share. What a tremendous resource!

We've had such a wonderful time in the rainforest that we hate to leave. But we're not going too far - just north to Mexico - see you there!

Awesome Brazil and rainforest resources

We've been studying Brazil and the rainforest for two weeks now and we've really had a lot of fun with it. There are a lot of resources to tell you about, so maybe I'll start with our favorites and describe them and then just put the rest in a list.

By far, everyone's favorite book was this one:

My Amazon River Day

I'm sorry there's no picture of it, it appears to be out of print but there are some reasonably priced used copies on Amazon.com. Thankfully, our library had it. The book chronicles a day in the life of a family that lives on a tributary of the Amazon through great photos and the words of the 10-year-old daughter, Patricia. Her brothers spear fish and climb TALL trees for fruit, they wash dishes and drink out of the (muddy) river and there are no walls in their house. My kids found it fascinating. I had Z-Man go through it twice after we read it - once to tell me how their lives differ from his and once to find the similarities. It was pretty eye-opening for him. (Everyone's clothed, by the way.)

We also enjoyed this one:

This was written by a biologist and is not a story book but the content is so interesting that it held Z-Man's attention. I'm sure the fact that we got to have chocolate in conjunction with it helped too. After learning about plants that help heal (and plants that hurt!), we watched this online video about jungle survival:

http://www.newtonsapple.tv/video.php?id=1418

For elementary aged kids, I don't think you can beat the A to Z series:

Lots of great photos and a different interesting topic on each page.

Z-Man and I investigated the Yanomami people, who live in the rainforest around the Brazil/Venezuela border. First, we read about them in Window on the World:

which gave us good information from a Christian perspective. We also watched this youtube slide show which I assume is the work of someone on a missions trip because the soundtrack is a really pretty version of "How Deep the Father's Love For Us."

Yanomami Village

And then we read a REALLY exciting book (as in, a little too exciting for younger children) being the fictional but very convincing account of eleven year old Alex, who survived a plane crash and was taken in by the Yanomami. The illustrations are just great. It's the boy's journal and there are both photos and his drawings and, in one instance, the drawings of some children who had never seen paper and pencils. There is a lot of great information told from an American kid's perspective, great photos of the Yanomami (people are NOT clothed, just so you know), a heroic rescue and even prayers to God for rescue and help although I don't know if the authors are Christian. It does show a tendency toward violence but no actual violence and it shows a tendency toward the mistreatment of girls and women but no disturbing images. There are, however, photos and drawings of their "religious practices" which the boy first finds scary and then beautiful. I explained to Z-Man what spirits they were calling out to and that they were using drugs and he didn't think it was so beautiful.

I went back and forth on this one, but, in the end, I was glad we read it. I will say though, that I wouldn't have read it to Z-Man last year.

We read about Nate Saint in this book:

which is written in a rhyming style which the boys didn't seem to mind. I do wish I had found a more in-depth book on this for Z-Man.

And, of course, we had a plethora of animal books, like this one:

which is great because it's divided by biomes and has gorgeous pictures.

Last, but not least, we watched good old Jack Hannah: Zoo Life - Wonders of the Rainforest which is a VHS tape and apparently so old that I can't even find a picture of it. Ah well.

If you've stayed with me to the end of this long, long post, I thank you! I'll try to post some pictures of Z-Man's lapbook over the weekend and then we'll be heading to Mexico!

Rainforest Resources for Pre-Schoolers

I promised you a post on our rainforest resources and there are a lot of them. I'll start with the things that were more geared to Little Man.

For the pre-school crowd (in other words, Little Man), these were our favorites:

You can sing this one to the tune of "Over in the Meadow." Only if you're into that, of course. It's great for counting practice, introducing rainforest animals AND the illustrations are amazing! They're all done with polymer clay. At the end of the book, there is information about both the author and illustrator, including how some of the pictures were made. She threw clay into her food processor for some of the backgrounds. Very inspiring for the would-be crafter.

Little Man also enjoyed (actually, we all did):

You can see our dioramas using the characters here.

We also have this fun book:

which is great because it has a two-page spread for all of the biomes we're covering this year. Good for counting and animal identification too.

And the one that got away:

This is one of those beautiful books from Sleeping Bear Press. You can read my rave, I mean review, here. Unfortunately, our library system does not have a single copy of it! Boo hoo.

Of course, Little Man also sits in on a lot of our other read-alouds and table projects and I'll share more of those in another post.

Rainforest Dioramas

Look! Shoebox dioramas of the rainforest! Well, actually two diaper box dioramas and one shoebox diorama.

Z-Man's

(notice the humming bird suspended by a thread - what a great idea!)

Little Man's

Mine

These were so fun to make. We printed out a google image of the rainforest for the background, made some trees out of paper bags and wrapped green pipe cleaner vines around them and then printed and colored the animals from Jan Brett's wonderful book, The Umbrella.

She has an amazing web page with all the animals, vines, tree trunks, flowers, insects, etc. that you would need to print out and color to make a three foot by six foot mural. Since we don't have that kind of coloring stamina, we printed a smaller version and did the dioramas instead! You can print some at her site here:

http://www.janbrett.com/mural_umbrella/umbrella_mural.htm

or visit the main page for all kinds of activities and printables:

http://www.janbrett.com/

In other news, we took a little field trip to a local aquarium store and saw two piranhas from the Amazon! Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good photo of them but these rainforest parakeets were happy to pose for us:

Brazil and the Amazon Rainforest

Did you know that one third of the world's oxygen comes from the Amazon rainforest? Did you know that one quarter of the world's animal species live in the Amazon rainforest? Did you know that one third of Brazil's entire population lives in slums?

Well, I didn't. Learning along with your kids is a great (and humbling) benefit of homeschooling.

Z-Man cracking Brazil nuts with a hammer. I love the look on his face! Apparently, this is easier to do if you freeze the nuts for 24 hours before cracking. Who knew? It's probably easier if you use a handy-dandy device called a nut cracker too.

Fun with another rainforest food: cocoa! We tried it with and without a sweetener because I have a mean streak. No, no! Goodness, no. It was because it was a science experiment, after all. Naturally, we had to ingest the results. Edible science experiments: A Good Thing.

Both of these foods, along with natural remedies of the rainforest, are described in fascinating detail in this book:

Tomorrow I'll show you some of the resources we're using and show you our beautiful rainforest shoebox dioramas!