2nd Grade Rainforest Habitat

This week some of the  2nd grade classes chose to create a rainforest Art page for one of their habitats.  First, we looked at illustrations and photos of the rainforest, and talked explored the different animals that live in a rainforest.  Then to paint the book, we started with a light green tempera for the background, and then we added a large tree with branches and vines from the brown. Then we switches to scissor art as each child created a tropical bird  and a frog with textured paper left over from last year's Eric Carle Art project.   The goal was to add lots of green leaves and vines with patterned texture paper, but in translation, only the most advanced students finished in time to complete this last step.  The next day, we experimented a bit with color mixing and I decided that we will come back and have the children add more leaves and greenery with PAINT rather than cut paper. This has been a learning process and has been very fun.  

These are student samples of a 2nd grader.  The bird was fashioned from basic oval shapes and then the children cut ovals to make feathers.

This 2nd grader had time to add a very cute little tree frog.  They drew the frog on the back side of the patterned paper, and then cut it out.   Again, after experimenting a bit, I think it would be best to paint the light green background, and then paint some darker green accents and texture on the background instead of trying to add all the leaves with cut paper.  Time was a factor with this lesson and another alternative would be to expand the lesson to 2 one hour sessions instead of one.  There just wasn't enough time to add all the fun details like a snake, flowers and greenery.  Unfortunately, we only had 1 hour to finish this project.  The rainforest scenes are still very beautiful and the children were delighted with their work.

For the writing portion of this art project, the children could add a short paragraph on tree or in the background.  The classroom teachers will be working the children to create poems or stories that go along with each habitat.

The birds were created using basic oval shapes and were inspired by an art lesson taught by Mimi Thomas.

Integration:  Science/Habitats
English Language Arts Common Core W.5.1  Writing