Bungle in the Jungle

Well, I want to chronicle the last two weeks of home school that turned into, basically, themed summer-camp (very little school-type work actually getting done). But it's so long ago that I don't remember everything. Here's my best reconstruction.

Week three was rain forest week. We broke it up into several different categories, and every day we studied books from the library about that particular topic:

• Fruits of the rainforest: the kids were blindfolded and asked to guess what rainforest fruits and spices they were tasting--there were obvious ones, like mangoes and bananas, and ones you wouldn't immediately think of, like chocolate and cinnamon. Then we ate rainforest fruit salad for a snack.

• Amphibians of the rainforest: I got a Beanie Baby shaped like a tropical frog and we played "poison frog hot potato" with it. We shaped fruit roll-ups like snakes for a snack (yeah, I know they're reptiles, but they're close, right?)

• Rainforest trees and plants: we went around our apartment complex and collected various leaves to see how their shape affects the way water rolls off of them. We actually nener got to this part, but we did collect the leaves! We talked about how many decorative plants we have actually come from the rainforest, and how many trees there have large leaves to collect as much sun as possible, and yet how they're shaped so that they direct water right to the forest floor. We also painted pictures of the rainforest using a leaf stamp I got at JoAnn's. We were going to collage with real leaves, but alas, we didn't.

Oh, and we had "Venus fly traps" for a snack, made as shown with cream cheese (colored green) and raisins. DB was obsessed with carnivorous plants for a while, mostly because he thought they were people-sized. They actually grow in swamps, but the rainforest has other carnivorous plants, so we lumped them in. (Shown with our real Venus flytrap, mentioned below).

• Mammals of the rainforest, including people. I broke out a pan flute and a recorder (South American instruments) and we tooted around on them for a while. We may have created a band. For snacks we had frozen chocolate-covered bananas. Yum!

We went on two awesome field trips. One was to the Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona Del Mar (free on Mondays--inexpensive any other day). They are lovely--great for a date, you can even eat lunch there--and they have a greenhouse full of tropical plants! We saw some cool ones and asked if they had any carnivorous plants, as I had remembered them having. They didn't on display, but they did in their shop! So we took one home, and DB was thrilled. It perished not long after, but it was good while it lasted.
We also managed to get free-day tickets (available once a month online) to the Huntington Library and Gardens, which have a jungle section outside AND an awesome greenhouse full of rainforest/cloud forest/bog exhibits (including carnivorous plants! Yay!). Those are right next to their children's garden, which is so fun to explore. I have more pictures, but my computer is not cooperating right now. This was a fun week, now that I remember it!
Oh, and for movies, we watched Ferngully, clips from Planet Earth (the birds of paradise are soooo cool!), and Diego. And we could have watched Jungle Book and the Curious George movie, but (curiously) we didn't. :)