Rain, Rain, Rain Forest

This book is about the plethora of living things that are found in the Rain Forest and how the find water, food, and take of themselves. Each page has a lot of text on it, which needed to be paraphrased for my students. There were a lot of sounds in this book, which my students enjoyed listening to me make. I engaged my readers by asking them to mimic my sounds with each page.
I did not have a reason for choosing this book to read to my children. I had checked out a bunch of Steve Jenkins' books from my school library and knew that animals are always an interesting topic for pre-kindergarten children.
For every transition, we were a different animal. I have found the best way to keep children semi-quiet in the hallways: give them a show more specific sound they CAN make. Asking them to be completely silent is nearly pointless, so we make “tiny baby” sounds. We were crickets, dart frogs, sloths, mosquitos, etc.
I have noticed with these lengthy non-fiction picture books, putting them in a center is important. With this book, a few flipped through the pages for a few moments, but were far more interested in the bucket of animals and magnifying glasses I had put out to supplement the material. In the bucket I included puppets, stuffed animals, plastic bugs, and internet pictures of the animals from the book. This was a very easy addition; I googled pictures of the animals and printed them out. My kids took magnifying glasses and pretended to be “scientists” studying each animal. My goal was to scaffold their language during this activity, by asking them to describe what they see, notice differences and similarities, and sort the animals by color. We have been doing a lot of seriation lately, so they initiated a seriation activity as well. They put the animals is order from smallest to biggest, and biggest to smallest.
My students enjoyed the illustrations in the book, so I used the Apple TV in my room to google a few real photos of these animals for the class to look at during snack time. I pulled up real photos of howler monkeys (my students' favorite), poisonous dart frogs, sloths, etc. They enjoyed the colorful animals, learning about how different they were, and finding out what a “bromeliad” is. show less

The main idea of this story is the rainforest. You, as the reader, go on a journey through the squishy swamp like forest floor to explore the rain soaked environment. Throughout the rainforest, the weather affects different types of animals, whether it is a sloth that is covered with moth, due to being wet, or a salamander that lives between the leaves. Many animals live in the rainforest due to the climate of the area. Due to all these animals the rainforest is filled with many sounds throughout the night. Although the weather doesn’t always stay rainy, animals use the surroundings in order to survive in the rainforest. Whether it is the leaves losing leaves or the sloths moving to a branch with more shade, the rainforest still show more allows these animals to adapt. show less

The books main message is that there are many different animals of all shapes and size that live in the rain forest and as hard as we try we will never be able to find them all. They all fight to survive and try to co-exist with each other a much as possible.

This book details the life of the rain forest, from the animals to the habitat to the weather.

I would use this book for 1-3 graders when learning about animals, different habitats, and weather.

A book about the animals, plants, and characteristics of the rain forest. The author uses sounds to create vivid images. Tells about what animals do for shelter, what they eat, and their daily lives.

Read-Aloud
Narrative - A day in the rain forest
Animals: Sloth, howler monkeys, poison dart frog, then interactions with people (scientist)