rainforest

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Home : 2003 : August : 4

rainforest
By Susan

I used a rainforest theme last year. I had a "Calendar Oasis" bulletin board. I used blue cellophane paper to create a river, I added moss along the edges and added a blow up snake I bought at Wal-Mart (sold in garden
area to keep small animals away). I made 12 paper canoes and wrote the months of the year on each. I added plastic insects I bought from Oriental trading along the river. I also had a "Going Bananas for Books" bulletin board in my classroom library area. I made a banana tree and added stuffed monkeys I bought at Rainforest Cafe (you could make them out of paper and stuff them). As the

kids read books, they filled out a paper banana cutout with the book info (title, author, summary, and rating) and I added it to the tree in bunches of 10 (great math activity). I made a huge mural with a hut on stilts I drew on one side and added the classroom 's rules in it. Starting from the center of the mural extending toward the opposite end I hung (from the ceiling)a vine made out of twisted butcher paper with a plastic vine(sold at craft stores) twisted in it, I added a stuffed snake and wrote "Sss...Sensational Work" as the caption. I bought a scrapbook paper sold at the Rag Shop that had jungle animal cutouts. I took pictures of my students and glued each picture to one of the animal cutouts and then spread these out on the mural. Their work was stapled under their pictures throughout the year. I bought a red-eyed tree frog from the Rainforest Cafe and he was the class mascot. The kids named him and a different student took him home every weekend and wrote about his adventures in his journal. Each Monday, the child would read the journal to the class. The kids really loved this! Hope this helps.