Making Rain Forest Items: Fast and Easy is a site for the crafty teacher who could use some ideas as to how to implement craft activities in the rainforest unit. An intermediate teacher from New Jersey suggests steps on how to make poison arrow frogs, vines, leaves, and nests. They are some great ideas.

Teacher Developed Lessons from over 200 of Earthwatch's Fellows were compiled and a sampling was placed on this page. These units, lessons, and activities based on the rainforest represent many creative classroom applications submitted to the Earthwatch organization. The lessons fit the elementary teacher's needs quite well.

The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest is a neo-classic children's book used by elementary teachers when talking about the rainforest. Check out Carol Hurst's review of the book and ideas for discussions, lessons, and activities. Her page dedicated to this book also includes related books to this neo-classic.

Teaching about the Rainforest can be made a little simpler with these ideas provided by five members of the Woodrow Wilson Biology Institute. These classroom ideas might spark inspiration in elementary teachers and ignite true interest in elementary students. These nine ideas are accompanied by a comprehensive list of rainforest teaching resources.

This page contains the lesson entitled Rainforests of Madagascar: Role Playing and Decision Making. Most appropriate for high school students, as written, this lesson has great potential for an elementary classroom activity. Asking the students to take on the role of someone who's life is touched by the rainforest isn't such a far-fetched idea. Through reading fiction and non-fiction books and exposure to information in and outside of class, students can be informed members of such a role-play.

The Animal Awareness lesson of Marshall Middle School was designed for seventh grade students. This lesson is takes place in two phases: data collection and presentation. Students at any grade-level can perform such tasks. The complexity of the data and presentation will vary with grade-level. In addition to typical forms of presentation, the creation of a web page or computerized slide show could be quite impressive.

The Animals of the Tropical Rainforest Webquest suggests use of well-designed, very informative web sites (some included in this comprehensive rainforest site) in answering some major questions about the rainforest. This webquest would be most appropriate for upper-elementary students because of its research format and the level of reading on the suggested sites. Perhaps this webquest could be adapted to better fit the younger elementary students by you or your colleagues.

The Schoolhouse's collection of Classroom Activities for Teachers is quite comprehensive. It has something for all elementary teachers. Special sections include books for children and classroom activities for young students. This site is worth seeing for its suggested activities.

A Rainforest Site for Middle School Students is a good place of learning. There are three projects proposed on the site and a list of links. Some of those links can be found on my site. Upon connecting to those sites, students can find the information needed to address the tasks in these projects. Although designed for Middle School students, these projects can be performed at the elementary level.