Rain Forest Lapbook - 2nd Grade

I let Holly choose a couple of subjects to do special projects on each year. And, for this school year she chose Rain Forests and Coral Reefs. We wrapped up the rain forest unit a couple weeks back - it was a lot of fun! I created the objectives I had in mind for her unit and then planned around them with tons of books, documentaries, art work, games, online resources, mural, and a lapbook.

Holly chose all the elements she put in her lapbook. We did not include every little project or study in it as there is just no way we could do that and keep the sanity and fun in lapbooking. She did include some pretty key elements though, so that is good. She kept lists of animals, plants, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects and foods from the rain forest that we learned about and researched. She also included a couple of art projects and drawings, maps, work packs, vocabulary review, layers of forests, comparisons between tropical and temperate, locations of forests, small projects and more! She had a great time designing her lapbook as she went along. It is all her work, a representation of how she enjoys being creative and a wonderful end product that stores easily.

Making Chocolate

For part of Holly's rainforest unit she learned about various products we consume from there. We looked at different foods, spices and medicines we all use. However one particular item was the most popular... chocolate! What seven year old wouldn't find chocolate to be the most exciting.

We started with a tasting of dark and milk chocolate to see if she preferred one over the other. Holly enjoyed both but preferred the milk chocolate. With that we used a kit I had ordered to make chocolate. She used a cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa butter to make the chocolate over the stove top, then had to temp it and make the little chocolates with treats in them (peanut butter, nuts, cranberry and marshmallows. They turned out fantastic!

The kit also included a few real cacao beans for her to explore - she rubbed them in her hands, smelled them, tasted them, cut them open and sampled it a bit more. She didn't like them at all - 'too bitter' for her. A good experience!

Apple Lapbook & Lesson

After out visit to Lattin's Cider Mill yesterday we had to have a good school day of apples. Holly enjoyed it so much and has asked to do the same with pumpkins in a few weeks... I'll be organizing that very soon. In the mean time today was filled a lot of apple fun - inspecting an apple, revisiting the parts of an apple, seed estimation, tasting various kinds and comparing, watching a video on the apple industry and orchards, discussing the health benefits of apples, reading a few books, apple stamping, sentence organizing and writing, an experiment and more!

With all of these projects on tap I had Holly work on a lapbook - a great way to keep all of her work. A lapbook seems to break up the daily grind of reading, writing & recording. She loves them and so do I. This is a pretty basic lapbook but one that Holly could do all by herself with little help from me... meaning she feels very proud when she is finished!

Mini-Ant Lapbook

Holly put together a mini-lap book during her ant studies. We have made larger lap books, however this study really only required a small version. Still a very fun way to gather information we covered to review what she knows.

Her cover is a homemade ant she created. I didn't have the cover closed very well, so it looks a little funny in the photo - the legs do line up. The legs are all attached to the thorax, which is what she tried doing here. It looks cute when it is closed.

Then the inside of her lap book contains a little mini-book on predators of ants, ant body parts, facts about ants like that they have two stomachs, an ant has an exoskeleton, six legs, etc...

She also included a great diagram on an ant, externally and internally - she really enjoyed using this sheet to learn about ants.

The back cover she decided to include the ant life cycle and a little matchbook on various kind of ants. The matchbook ant book took six different kinds of ants and she had to write a fact about them, their diet and habitat. It was fun to really stop and review the knowledge we learned on ants and she loves to create little lap books - such a fun way to learn!