Here’s our box about South America. It has some good stuff, but I’d like to add more. I don’t have anything relating to the Amazon rainforest except a couple animals. As I add more items, I will update this post.

Top: Envelopes holding like items.

Bottom Left: Paper doll from Education.com

Bottom Right: Flag wheel from Enchanted Learning.

Peeking in the box

Our Continent Boxes:
Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Australia
Europe
North America
South America

To learn more about our continent boxes click here.

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After visiting North America, the next stop on our imaginary world tour was to the Amazon rainforest in South America. This part of the world is a favorite for my kids – as I’m sure it is for many kids. There is such an array of fun plants & animals. They love the big snakes, colorful birds & frogs, monkeys & big cats.

Google defines a tropical rainforest as:

a luxuriant, dense forest rich in biodiversity, found typically in tropical areas with consistently heavy rainfall.

School Room

We used our globe & multiplication to figure out approximately how many miles it is from the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest to the Amazon rainforest. We came up with 5,280 miles and marked it on our map.

Our biome pocket chart filled with info on the rainforest.

Left: Every week Farm Kid1 is “sending” a postcard to his dad who didn’t travel on this trip with us. He decorates the front & writes a little message on the back.

Right: South America stamp in Farm Kid1’s passport.

Left: Rainforest collage made by Farm Kid1.

Right: Farm Kid1 chose to do his rainforest animal report on a toucan. The animal report wheel is from Enchanted Learning.

A few rainforest goodies sitting in our geography center. Toy animals from the boys collection, a Tropical Rainforest leveled reader from scholastic, Afternoon on the Amazon Magic Tree House book & Jan Brett’s The Umbrella.

Field Trip

Our rainforest theme took us to the Oregon Zoo once again. To see my post on our trip through the Amazon Flooded Forest exhibit click here.

More Rainforest Info

Our South American Continent Box
Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool
Kids Do Ecology
Blue Planet Biomes
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

Links to our Continents & Biomes:
North America – Temperate Rainforest
South America – Tropical Rainforest
Antarctica – Ice Cap
Africa – Sahara Desert
Australia – Coral Reef
Asia – Tundra
Europe – Deciduous Forest

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As part of our Amazon Rainforest study we visited the Amazon Flooded Forest exhibit at the Oregon Zoo. This is a section we don’t generally spend a lot of time exploring. So, this was a great excuse to look a little closer. I had Farm Kid1 answer a few questions such as Which animal is the most colorful? Why? Which animal is the hardest to find? Why? Can you find all the colors of the rainbow in this exhibit? Farm Kid2 had a piece of paper & a few crayons. He drew the animals.

I’m not sure about you, but I never realized how high the waters get in the Amazon. I guess I never thought about it. The seasons in the Amazon are marked by the rain. During the rainy season the Amazon basin will flood, the waters getting extremely high. Eventually the water will recede showing off the forest floor. Some how the plants & animals have figured out how to adapt to these changes every year.

RED-HANDED TAMARIN
Emerald tree boa in the background. It appears as though these two are in the same area, but really they are separated by glass.

EMERALD TREE BOA

GREEN ANACONDA

PACU
Also in the exhibit are big fish called pacu. We learned that pacu in the wild eat the fruit from trees when the water is high, then poop out the seeds. When the water level recedes the seeds grow into new trees. These fish are an important part of the system.

DWARF CAIMAN
Not exactly the prettiest set of teeth.

ARRAU TURTLE
They are an endangered species.

We spent a good 45 minutes examining this small, but educational, exhibit. We all left with a better understanding of the rainforest.

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