When it was time for school, we cut out all the animals, read the book, and acted it out. After all the animals squeeze onto the umbrella, it was the hummingbird who flipped it over!
Then we hung it on our bulletin board. Here you can see Carlos at the top of the rainforest canopy with his umbrella, wondering why there are no animals in the forest today. Vanna White thought the book should be in the picture too!
Then we sorted pictures of rainforest animals. We learned about reptiles and compared different monkeys and frogs, but classifying the bat proved to be tough.
We picked a few favorite animals and watched a video about them. We were fascinated with the Strawberry poisonous dart frog carrying her tadpoles to different bodies of water and going back to check on them. We learned about the sticky pads on their feet to help them stick to the leaves when they jump...
So we made some strawberry poisonous dart frogs and tried it ourselves! Despite the "lower sugar" jelly, it was indeed sticky enough and the dart frogs were able to stick to the window.
We relaxed with some books on CD...
And were rewarded when a bug crawled by. We put him in our bug jar to observe. We let him out in the backyard and gave him some grass for lunch, but we were very surprised that he wasn't waiting by the jar after lunch! Maybe he'll be back tomorrow.
I like that the students were in on the evening prep for the morning classes! Love the activities, love the classroom, love the uniforms!
ReplyDeleteThis was so much fun to read because just today I read Jan Brett's The Umbrella to my kindergarten library class. It was a BIG book and they were quiet as a tree frog listening and looking at the beautiful pictures. As soon as I finished, one little boy, forgetting the raise-your-hand-before-you-talk rule, yelled out, "Read it again!" He would have loved your class! (where I'll bet you don't have to raise your hand before you talk!)
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