Rain Forest Lapbook

This first year for science I aimed to make our way around the globe to visit each biome. To introduce to the boys the globe, different climates, animals, plants, insects etc that live there. Biomes is a wonderful way to keep it organized. We began with the desert because it fit in so well with our Ancient World history studies of Mesopotamia and Egypt. We then trotted on over to visit the Rain forests of the World and currently we are looking at the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Following that we will look at Coral reefs and the seashore and finally the Mountains. I used The One Small Square series and DK 24 Hour series and Dover coloring books. All Three are really good for introducing nature study concepts, tools for exploration, how to do something with your findings, basic facts about the topic and fabulous pictures. These are the three for the Rain forest.

I copy the coloring book and leave it out for the boys to color whenever they feel inclined. They have oooodles of pages from our previous coloring books as well, so it is often a good reveiw. They cut them up, color them and paste them on their walls and make little books with them. And I can relax because I still have the original copy for future use. :)

I also incorporat a lap book or two, activities and art. Lapbooks are a fun way to narrate the books we read, and a fancy way to do a nature journal. Homeschool Share is a great place to start. I look up the topic I am interested in, then download all the pieces that look interesting. Then I Google the topic tag it with "lapbook free" and see what else I can find. In the end it is an eclectic mish mash of really cool things. Then with all that merging together sometimes we even get a good idea ourselves.

Front Cover

 Opened up to view the very back, where there is a pocket made simply by folding a piece of colored paper not quite in half and then glued on the sides. The umbrella and many of the animal pictures are from Jan brett's collection of free images from her books. I typed up one fact about each animal and then we played a game called guess who? I read the fact and they found the animal it belonged to and glued the fact on the back. Their favorite animals we put on the back of the front flaps and the rest in the pocket.

When you open the front flaps this is what you see.

Fact book about Emerald Boas. The snake can lift up. The boys like to pretend the snake eats the other animals in the lapbook by striking at them. We used this template for the snake shape, and then invented the rest.

                      

The facts

The layers of the rain forest. This was our original idea. We took this wonderful layered book from the homeschool share lapbook, then I copied the small animal pictures in the back of the One Small Square book and then we reviewed what animal, plant or bird lived in which story.

Lapbook from homeschool share

I also look around for story books related to the biome to broaden the Topic. When we get more into the Arctic biome we will read Mr. Pooper’s Penguins. When we did a Meerkat lap book we read Meerkat mail. And with the Rain forest lapbook we read Under the Umbrella by Jan Brett and the Great Kapook tree by Lynne Cherry