Exploring Rainforests and Grasslands

Biome or habitat?  I had been calling the rainforest, grassland, desert, etc. habitats, however when I looked for activities on these locations, I found quite a few people calling them biomes. Now, you may be wondering, much like I did. . .what is the difference?  Which is correct?  I don't want to teach my kiddos the wrong information!

Well, if you are curious, here are the definitions per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
habitat (n): the place or type of place where a plant or animal naturally or normally lives or grows
biome (n): a major ecological community type (as tropical rain forest, grassland, or desert)
So basically, I was wrong.  No worries, starting this year, I will call them biomes, and pray that my mistake did not adversely affect any of my previous students.

Now that we know what they are called, let's see what I put together to study them!  We have only covered the rainforest and grassland so far.  We will be learning about the desert next week.

The rainforest is always one of the favorites as far as kiddos are concerned.  I prepared my room by sprucing up my classroom with a tree.  This has two benefits, it keeps my kiddos from hanging on the pole and it helps them remember the layers of the rainforest.

I checked some rainforest books out from the library, as well as a few CDs.

The kids enjoyed listening to the music and they loved looking at the pictures in the nonfiction animal books!  Sorry I didn't take a picture of the books!

I also found some activities to use during centers to reinforce the rainforest theme.  They practiced sorting syllables in the Pocket Chart Center.  This free activity is from Happily Ever After Education.

In the Writing Center they wrote informational pieces in their notebooks.  I added a sheet of rainforest words to the center to help them with brainstorming and spelling.  Thanks to Sally LeTendre for the word list!

I thought this one was hilarious!

"Light snakes are poisonous.  They say stay away I am poisonous.  Leopards are fast.  They have polkadots.  Sloths move very slowly like grandmas."

"I know that leopards can run very fast fast fast."

In the Poetry Center they highlighted word wall words in a jaguar poem and did an illustration.  They also completed a jaguar craft.  They traced the pieces and used the picture to decide how to glue it together.  Thanks Holly K for the template and poem!

In writing, they came up with clues about a rainforest animal.  They wrote clues on one paper and drew their animal on a second paper.  After they were finished the kiddos got to read their clues and have their classmates guess the animal.  

This week we moved on to the grasslands.  We focused on the African Savanna.  Instead of a jaguar craft, they made a paper plate zebra.

I checked some more books out from the library.  My students love bringing in books from home when we have a theme.  This was a great one to share with the class because it teaches you how to count to ten in Swahili!

After reading the elephant book, we followed up with informational writing about elephants.  I put the book up in front of the classroom for reference for the illustration.  The kids drew wonderful elephants!

"An elephant has big ears.  It uses them to fan her baby.  A elephant has tusks.  They are teeth."

They also got to make a sticker safari picture, which we followed up with more writing of course.  They are becoming such fabulous writers.  I am so proud of my little ones!  This was only after 15 minutes of writing.  We continued working on it the next day, and this little kindergartener filled up the front and back of her paper!

At the end of the week we made a chart to show what we know about each biome.  We will add to this chart when we learn about the desert and other biomes.

Come on back to see what we do with deserts!