The Rainforest -- a fascinating topic of study
The tropical rainforest is a fascinating topic for a homeschool unit study! Just the botany and zoology alone could take weeks to cover. There are also the history of the rainforest, the indigenous peoples of the rainforest, and the economy of the rainforest.
You can cater this topic to your youngest of students by focusing on the fascinating creatures such as toucans and leopards or raise the challenge by requiring older students to explore the political issues surrounding the use and misuse of this global treasure.
Your options are almost as endless as the variety of life in the rainforest itself. This lens (or webpage) is designed to point you in the direction of some great online resources and living books that will enhance your homeschool unit study of the rainforest. If you like to make lapbooks, you will be delighted to find free printable templates for rainforest related minibooks. Each photo of a homemade minibook is a link to a template I designed. Get your pith helmet and let's explore the rainforest!
photo credit
Plants of the Rainforest
Plant life in the rainforest is known for its gigantic proportions and amazing characteristics. Epiphytes are plants that grow high up on branches and trunks of trees where they can get sunlight through the dense canopy. They absorb nourishment and water from the humid air all around them. Mosses, lichens, ferns, orchids, and bromeliads are all types of epiphytes.
The leaves of bromeliads, a type of epiphyte,are arranged in such a way as to hold water in the center. Inside this water, entire miniature ecosystems can thrive -- tadpoles, insects, and frogs. For a fact sheet about bromeliads, click here.
If you'd like a free template for making a bromeliad minibook of your own, click on the picture of it below. You will access a PDF for a unique minibook I designed that opens on both the right and the left. For the same file in A4 size click here.
Make your own three dimensional bromeliad make your out of paper. Directions are here. The printable template even includes a frog to live inside the flower!
Another fascinating plant of the rainforest is the Amazon Giant Water Lily -- a plant large enough to support 300 pounds of weight! Learn more about this fascinating plant and make your own interactive minibook with pink and white swing-out flowers by clicking on the image. For the same file in A4 size click here.
Kapok Tree
The giant kapok tree is another monster of the rainforest. Most rainforest plants and trees have very shallow roots. To anchor them more firmly in the ground, many rainforest trees have buttress roots around the bottom of the trunk for support. The native peoples of the rainforest pound on the roots of the kapok tree as if they were playing a drum. The loud booming noices are a way to communicate through the dense jungle.
For a fact sheet about the kapok tree click here.
Click the picture to the left to access a PDF template for making that minibook. Four inside flaps hold these vocabulary words -- canopy, buttress roots, lianas (vines), and epiphytes. For the same file in A4 size, click here.
The Great Kapok Tree is a beautiful picture book, appropriate to introduce your children to the wonders of the rainforest. It is about much more than this fabulous tree, though. The ladies at Homeschool Share have designed a free
Literature Based Unit Study for this book. You will find many printables and lapbooking templates there!
The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest
Amazon Price: $7.00 (as of 11/23/2009)
Reproducibles from Evan Moor
Giant Science Resource Book: Grades 1-6
This book has a section on habitats, and rainforest gets four pages. You probably wouldn't buy this book just to study the rainforest. But it's a great investment for elementary science reproducibles. I own this book and have turned to it time and time again, not only for our rainforest study but also for many other science topics.
Amazon Price: $17.81 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $9.24
Theme Pockets - June
This reproducible book features the Amazon Rainforest with these activities: rainforest layers puzzle, blue morpho butterfly model, draw a jaguar, rainforest animals fact cards, and make a kapok pod. (Two other topics covered are Artists and Farmers Feed Us.)
Amazon Price: $14.99 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $9.67
Rainforest Lapbook Pictures
It can really help to inspire you when you see someone else's finished work. Look at these rainforest lapbooks for ideas.
- 4Real Forums
- In this forum discussion, one mom posted pics of her child's beautiful rainforest lapbook. The cover is a brilliant idea! Check it out!
- Happy Hearts Mom's lapbook
- A great lapbook with twenty images to view!
- Rainforest Lapbook on Flickr
- These are images from my daughter's rainforest lapbook.
The Best Rainforest Resources Online
- Rainforest Alliance
- The Rainforest Alliance's Learning Site offers an abundance of printable PDF and online resources arranged by grade level -- from K to 8. Species profiles, coloring pages, slideshows, e-books, lesson plans, and more. This is truly a fabulous resource, and all free! Check it out! We used both the coloring pages and the species profiles as material for our minibooks. Hint -- print it on sticker paper, cut out what you want, and then just stick it into your minibook!
- The Living Rainforest
- This site offers some printable worksheets and teaching ideas. The volume and quality is nowhere near that of the Rainforest Alliance, but you may still find some gems here. We used the Amazing Adaptations and the Background Worksheets in our own unit study.
Rainforest Poll
The tropical rainforest has so many varied facets of study! What is the favorite in your homeschool (or classroom)?
(Anyone can vote -- no log in is necessary. Just choose your answer and VOTE.)
Rainforest Resources
printables, lesson plans, and more
- Ed Helper's Rainforest Coloring Book
- A PDF with large coloring book images of several rainforest animals -- aye aye, morpho butterflies, leaf cutter ants, macaws, frogs, slots, toucans, tigers, and more.
- Homeschool Share Rainforest Theme
- I've linked to some of Homeschool Share's resources elsewhere on this page, but the site is worthy of a few links! This page has all of their rainforest related materials all on one page. Convenient!
- RAN Flashcards
- RAN offers this nice PDF of plant an animal flashcards. One side has a full color image, the other lists facts. Make a pocket and include these in your lapbook!
- ABC Teach Rainforest Theme
- A long list of average quality resources -- crossword puzzles, coloring sheets, etc.
- Birds of the Rainforest Coloring Pages
- Thirteen beautiful black and white drawings done by a professional artist.
- Rainforest Live
- These are called coloring pages, but actually they are just simple outlines of animals. These would, however, make GREAT templates for shape books. Animals include -- parrot, tapir, orangutan, tiger, and a snake. Make multiple copies and staple together for a book. Complete the drawing for the cover. But text and and more drawings inside.
- Rainforest Diorama
- The American Museum of Natural History has created these free printables for making your own shoebox diorama of the rainforest ecosystem. Another simpler design featuring the layers of the canopy can be found at Storm the Castle.
- RETAIL -- Rainforest Habitats Lapbook from In the Hands of a Child
- This lapbook kit is sold at CurrClick as an ebook download.
- Moody Gardens Educator Guides
- Scroll to the very bottom of the page for the Tropical Rainforest Curriculum PDF.
Here is the Tropical Rainforest
Click on the leopard picture to go to Chunky Monkey's rainforest friends. You'll find stories set in the rainforest and directions for how to draw several rainforest animals.
For general sites which you can explore alongside your children, visit
Learning about Rainforests
or MBGnet's Rainforest page,
or Passport to the Rainforest.
Rainforest Video
Browse around Youtube for other great rainforest videos. This one is from National Geographic, so you know it's good.
Art Connection
For a truly complete unit study, you will want to include many disciplines. Art is an easy one to incorporate into your rainforest explorations! Henri Rousseau painted a whole series of fanciful Jungle images. Study these paintings with your children. Compare what you see with what you know is true about actual rainforests. Then let your children make their own Rousseau style jungle paintings. Use the online game below, or make your own with crayons or paints. Be sure to include it in your rainforest lapbook somewhere!
- Rousseau Tiger Drawing at Art Projects for Kids
- Art Projects for Kids is a truly amazing blog when it comes to art ideas for children. This lesson is about creating tigers in the same style as Rousseau.
- Art Lesson Ideas for Henri Rousseau
- Many ideas and pictures for creating your own jungle artwork. Also includes biographical information about the artist, who never visited a rainforest, by the way.
- Art and Ecology
- Lesson plans by the National Gallery of Art dealing with many images, one of which is Henri Rousseau's Tropical Forest with Monkeys.
- Jungle Interactive
- An interactive design activity for kids. Create your own rainforest artwork similar to Rousseau's. Then print it out for your lapbook!
Henri Rousseau and Jungle Drawing
Henri Rousseau's Jungle Book (Adventures in Art)
Amazon Price: $11.21 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $6.86
A Weekend With Rousseau
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $0.75
Draw Rainforest Animals
Amazon Price: $8.99 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $0.71
Graphics and Photos
As you create minibooks, notebook pages, or other rainforest projects, you'll need images and graphics. Use these links to find what you need.
- Jungle Photos
- Hundreds of images and information pages on animals, plants, people, scenery and more, from Central and Southern Africa and Amazon Rainforest. Images are NOT in public domain, but art teachers and students do have permission to use images (educational - in class use).
- Educational Technology Clearninghouse
- Free clipart for educational uses! This is a treasure trove of black and white line drawings. Search for a particular plant or animal. The orchid and big cat images on this page are from ETC. Each image comes in three sizes. To convert any gif file into a JPEG suitable for printing, use this online converter. It works like a charm!
- New York Public Library Digital Gallery
- This is another fabulous online find! Search for whatever animal, plant, or person you are looking for. Some fantastic images from old books and artwork will be uncovered!
The Umbrella
by Jan Brett
Jan Brett wrote a book about the rainforest -- The Umbrella. Amazingly, she has posted on the Internet, a multitude of free resources to go along with that book (or with any study of the rainforest). First are beautiful black and white line drawings of rainforest foilage and animals for making your own mural! Any of these could be reduced in size to make a collage or a minibook. And in this fun video, you can watch Jan Brett not only talk about her idea for this book but also draw a toucan!
And Homeschool Share has a unit study with lesson plans to accompany this living book.
Animals of Rainforest
No study of the rainforest would be complete without at least a dabbling into the diverse wildlife found there. From tarsiers to orangutans, from toucans to piranhas... many of the animals of the rainforest are found no where else on earth.
Try coloring these Nine Most Endangered Rainforest Animal pages.
For some online fun, try Animals of a Tropical Rainforest (scroll down for the link). In this online game, you place the rainforest animals in their correct layers of the canopy. Then the image you create can be printed out!
For a template of a layered book about the big cats of the rainforest, click the image. For the same file in A4 size, click here. Three of the world's four largest big cats are found in the rainforests!
World's four largest cats:
1. Tiger
2. Lion
3. Jaguar
4. Leopard
Would you like to create a rainforest environment in your own home? Listen to these fun sound effect files!
See if you can identify the animals making these noises.
CurrClick sells an Animals of the Rainforest Lapbook by In the Hands of a Child
Lemurs
Lemurs exist only in Madagascar and are the most endangered of the primates.
Duke University offers a great coloring book of lemurs.
Leafcutter Ants
Leafcutter ants are called the first farmers! They use the leaves they carry back home to grow a fungus which they eat. Fascinating!
For directions and a printable template for making this leafcutter ant pocket and book, click the picture.For the same file in A4 size, click here.
More Rainforest Animal Minibooks
Everything is huge in the rainforest -- snakes are no exception! Huge anacondas and tree climbing boas are intriguing animals to add to your rainforest study.
Click the picture for directions and a template for this circle book about snakes of the rainforest. For the same file in A4 size, click here.
Rainforest Animal Diorama
We made this very fun diorama book based on these directions for a tunnel book. My daughter wrote her own short story to accompany the 3D canopy view inside the mini-book.
For a template, click the picture. For an A4 sized template, click here.
Books about the Animals of the Rainforest
The Manatee
The Manatee lives in the Amazon River. This endangered animal is so homely that it is actually cute!
For our mini-book about the manatee we used the following resources:
fact sheet about the manatee
printable map of the manatee's habitat
Save the Manatee website has sound recordings, video clips, photographs, and printable PDFs.
From the Rainforest Alliance
1. Manny the Manatee is a slideshow/story about a manatee living in the Amazon whose water is muddied by erosion
2. PDF Coloring page
3. PDF Species Profile
This resource was not available when we made our manatee minibook, but Homeschool share has an entire manatee lapbook!
Manatees (World Life Library.)
Amazon Price: $14.00 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $0.48
Freshwater Giants: Hippopotamuses, River Dolphins, and Manatees (Watts Library: Animals)
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $7.95
Rainforest on eBay
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Magic Tree House
If you like the exploring the world with Jack and Annie in the Magic Tree House series, you'll want to read Afternoon on the Amazon by Mary Pope Osborne. There is also a companion research guide all about the rainforest.
ABC Teach offers some free printables in PDF related to this book:
Unscramble the Words
Wordsearch
Crossword Puzzle
Vocabulary and Comprehension Questions
Rainforest Hands-on Learning
Kids love getting messy and learning through doing!
Begin your crafts with this free online project. The American Museum of Natural History has some printable diorama templates for three habitats.
The one for the rainforest is here. Another simpler design featuring the layers of the canopy can be found at Storm the Castle.
Do an experiment with a bromeliad -- a pineapple!
Kid's Craft Weekly has a jungle theme issue with an assortment of crafts made from normal household items. (I love this craft newsletter! Search their archives for more topics.)
Then add even more hands-on activities to your unit study with the ideas in these books!
The Remarkable Rainforest: An Active-Learning Book for Kids, New Edition
Amazon Price: $10.95 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $10.94
Rainforests: An Activity Guide for Ages 6-9
Amazon Price: $11.21 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $6.75
Rainforest Animals
These amazing photos all come from Flickr. Click on the individual picture to find out more about the photographer and animal. For more pictures like this, visit the Rainforest Flora and Fauna Flickr group.
Chocolate Connection
another treasure from the rainforest
What a delicious aspect to incorporate into your rainforest unit study! This is sure to motivate your children!
Chocolate comes from the cocoa beans which grow on the cocoa tree, a native plant of the rainforest.
Investigate these links for teaching resources about chocolate:
Printable PDFs with lessons, facts, and photos from the Field Museum's Chocolate Exhibit
chocolate slideshow in PDF format from Rainforest Alliance
Hershey's Chocolate explains how to make chocolate -- from bean to bar.
For your mini-book, make a candy wrapper book using these fun sites:
images of scanned candy wrappers (Or just eat your own candy bars and use the real thing!)
blank chocolate bar wrapper template
or use these chocolate kiss shape book templates
Then add in some other facts such as Cocoa Tree.org's printables about chocolate -- a nice map of growing regions of the cocoa tree, a chocolate timeline (5 centuries of cocoa), and other resources.
For a nice coloring page of a man harvesting cacao beans in the rainforest, try this coloring page from the Smithsonian.
For more ideas for chocolate related mini-books for a rainforest lapbook, see these bloggers who made chocolate lapbooks:
Just Call Me Jamin'
The Duncan Yo-Yos
Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest
Amazon Price: $12.71 (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price: $0.73
Rainforest Dress Up
Do some play acting by dressing up as rainforest animals!
Read how to use face paints to make someone look like a tiger! This is a full color printable PDF with directions for another style of tiger face paint. And here is a recipe to make your own face paints -- safe and cheap!
I bought leopard print fabric and made a cape for my daughter. She loves to pretend she is a big cat! This site, although rather visually bland, has many great ideas for novice sewers to make their own dress-up clothes.
Child's Tiger Costume Make Up Kit
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price:
Child's Tiger Jumpsuit Costume (Size:Small 4-6)
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price:
Child's Tiger Halloween Costume Mask
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
Used Price:
Rainforest Lapbook Guestbook
I welcome your notes, questions, or suggestions.
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- Evelyn_Saenz Evelyn_Saenz Aug 17, 2009 @ 5:04 am
- Welcome to the Back to School Group Lensography.
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Reply
- FueltheBrain FueltheBrain Apr 26, 2009 @ 8:04 am
- I love the files for the rain forest lapbooks! I can't wait to use them with my students.
Thanks for an awesome lens.
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Reply
- Sarah Sarah Mar 19, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
- This is absolutely fantastic, as always! We've been working on our own rainforest lapbooks; you've given my a lot more ideas!
Sarah at smallworldathome.blogspot.com
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- AndyPo AndyPo Jan 19, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
- lovely lens
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- Simply Kiki Simply Kiki Jan 5, 2009 @ 10:52 am
- I love this site! Thanks
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by Jimmie
Hello! I am a homeschooling, stay at home mom who loves to teach and learn. I enjoy cooking from scratch, blogging, photography, and traveling, but I...
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