Rainforest Unit

In Miss Kelly's third grade class, we finished a unit on the Rainforest recently.  Each child did a research paper and built a diorama on a rainforest animal. Then, thanks to great planning on the part of my esteemed colleague, we took the kids to the rainforest cafe on a field trip.  My students do not get to visit downtown Chicago that often, so this was a great adventure for them.  Strange that they live a short bus ride away from downtown and yet rarely go there, But I digress.  The kids did a great job on the dioramas and the research papers!  They have gotten so good at projects!  (So have their parents, in helping them.) 

My students require quite a bit of hand-holding to get a project like this done.  I printed the pictures of the animal for them from www.enchantedlearning.com in order to inspire the, to get started on the projects.  I send home a very detailed packet with example pictures of dioramas and explicit instructions and the rubric.  It helps that my students' local library has a teacher on staff to help students.  We took the kids on a trip to the library at the beginning of the year and it made all the difference this year with our research projects this year.

Here is the hallway display, all set up for parent-teacher conferences.

The dioramas had to include the rainforest surroundings, the animal, and what the animal eats.  They had to make sure it was 3-D too!

Fruit Bat:

Blue Morpho Butterfly:

(you can see my rubric attached to the box, ha ha)

Tarantula:

Aye Aye

Anaconda:

(He is hiding in the grass)

Emerald Tree Boa:

Sugar Glider:

This one is not from my class, it is from my next door neighbor's class but it was so clever.  This child (or his parents) made an electric eel out of a grey sock.

Howler monkey: (and gorilla too, I guess)

Here are some of the research papers.  I should have taken better pictures of those.