The Rain Forest and Africa

I am nearing the end of my final updates for the end of the year activities in our classroom.  As we were anticipating the field trip to Niabi Zoo, we took some time to study a couple of habitats that would be represented at the zoo.

We began with the rain forest.  After reading many books, both fiction and nonfiction, students chose an animal to research and write a report on.

We learned the layers of the rain forest through a song and then everyone created a "layers of the rainforest" diagram.

 

Following our study of the rain forest, we began learning about Africa.  Again, we read many books and made some beautiful pictures of the grasslands.  (I'm sorry, but I forgot to take any pictures of these.)  

We spent a lot of time on comprehension, character study, and folk tales through our reading of "Anansi the Spider" stories.  Here are our favorites:

We all loved the antics of this trickster in the Ashanti tales in these retellings.