The children and I completed a really fun and educational unit about the rain forest recently. It's amazing to me how much they can recall and internalize when education is really brought to life for them. We used the inter-library loan system through our public library to borrow lots of great books and DVDs for our study and enjoyed them so much!
We journeyed through the emergent layer, the canopy, understory, and forest floor. We learned about animals and plants from the rain forest, and just how valuable the rain forest is to us, and we all agreed that we'd like to visit there someday!
One of my favorite parts of homeschooling...seeing my children, curled up together, reading a non-fiction book full of great information!
One evening while Mike was at work, I had the children draw detailed rain forest pictures. They had to have all four layers plus a plant and animal from each layer. They LOVED this. They used the library books as resources and really put a lot of time and thought into their work. These pictures became the covers to their rain forest lapbooks.
First they drew in pencil. Then they traced with black sharpie, and then layed on color with colored pencils. I asked them to try to not leave any white on their paper - it's such a challenge!
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| Xavier, age 6 |
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| Natalee, age 7 |
Our unit took about 3 weeks, with some days being almost solidly science based. Normally I don't push quite so hard but we had library materials that I knew would need returned.
Our lapbooks are from homeschoolshare.com and are a combination of pages from their following printables:
I'd still like to take the children to the grocery store and pick out a few items that are new to us that we have access to because of the rain forest and bring them home to try. I'm not adventurous with food and would like my children to be a little more so!
We did try some very dark chocolate (85%) - Xavier liked it, Natalee did not.
We ended up needing to do a tri-folder lapbook to get all the information and pieces in. Usually I let the kids lay out their lapbooks however they want, however this time Mike and I had to be involved as it was a trick to get it all to fit!
The lapbooks and unit study were a grand success and the kids proudly showed them off to Grandma and Grandpa last weekend!!
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