Rainforest Habitats

So we are starting the Habitat series from Hands of a Child.  This week we ventured through the rainforest.  We learned that Habitat is a "fancy" word for a place to live.  (Is it wrong to throw a little Fancy Nancy in for Lydia???)    We are doing our little lapbook (which I actually printed and bound with my new favorite homeschool equipment) and watching movies on the rainforest.  We watched the Magic School bus Rainforest special and the Eyewitness DVD on Rainforests.  I didn't feel like things were connecting, so yesterday I quickly assembled two poster boards and created a "Rainforest Layers" chart.  I printed pictures of what animals live in certain layers.  Today as we talked about each layer, the kids put those pictures up.  Kind of a gave good visual as to where everyone lives.  We even had some discussion about how some animals move freely between the middle layers.  We talked about why large animals live only on the forest floor.  When I asked Why this was, Joey responded, "Because an elephant can't climb a tree." 

We have about two more days in this booklet before we start a mini-Earth day science unit.  Then we will hop back on board for the next habitat series.  I think it may be Oceans or Arctic.  Both will tie in well with discussions of loss of habitat and Earth day discussions.  But I will let the kids pick.