Coconut trees can grown tall in warm rainforests and tropical coastal areas. These trees produce coconuts, which have multiple uses. Coconut trees have a distinctive look with a skinny trunk and long, green palm leaves at the top. Coconuts have a hard outer shell and white fruit inside. People eat the fruit and drink the juice. Coconut leaves are sometimes used to make baskets, brooms or roofing. Of course we read, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! During this Invitation to Create, children looked at the Inspiration Photo and the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. For this process, children were inspired to use stickers, craft sticks and napkins to create their own coconut trees.
We built letter Dd and practiced in our fine motor journals making curves and straight lines. They colored D coloring sheet.
We played Counting Coconuts. Taking turns rolling die and adding that number of coconuts to the tree. ​

Dart frogs are poisonous and have vibrant colors that warn predators not to eat them. The golden dart frog is the most dangerous. Dart frogs are very small and have long, sticky, tongues they use to catch insects.  They have sticky fingers to help them catch prey and climb trees. 
The kids colored and cut out lily pads. They were encouraged to write the number words on the lily pads as well. They took turns flicking a frog onto the lily pads.  They played with a sticky hand, to try catch letters! 
They placed stickers in their journals. 

The green anaconda is the largest snake in the world. It can grow up to 30 feet in length and weigh over 500 pounds. The scales on the snake help it move around the trees in the canopy layer. During this Invitation to Create, children experimented with bubble wrap, green and white paint to create their own snakeskins. Children explored materials and discovered what effects they had on paper, such as how the textured material of bubble wrap created snakeskin designs.  
I placed trees with uppercase letters at end of the table, they made the snakes with lower case letters slither to the matching tree.  
For fine motor, they glued small pieces of the number 5 to a large 5 and glued in their journals.  They made squiggly lines, helping the snake get down the page! 

Sloths move very slowly. They have sharp claws to hang upside down on branches. They mostly eat leaves and fruit from trees. A sloth can turn its head up to 270 degrees to explore its surroundings. 
Artist Michelangelo started painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1508 and completed it in 1512. At the time, he was better known as a sculptor and had never painted a fresco before Michelangelo used wooden scaffolding to stand on and paint the ceiling. During this Invitation to Create, children explored what it would be like to draw upside-down. Children pretended they were sloths hanging upside-down while creating their masterpiece. Through this process, children discovered unique and nontraditional ways to draw a picture.

Who doesn't love chocolate?  Do you know where it comes from?  Chocolate is made from cocoa trees that grow in the shade of taller trees. Cocoa trees grow cocoa pods that have beans inside them. The cocoa beans are dried and made into delicious treats.
I taped numbered pod photos to bottom of a table.  They took turns rolling die, identified the number and then crawled under the table to find and remove the cocoa pod with the same numeral. We counted out that many chocolate chips! 
We made "Sweet Letters", I taped two cups together to pretend it was a cocoa pod. I placed chocolate chips inside the cup and explained that a cocoa pod has seeds that make chocolate inside.  They took turns using tweezers to remove the chocolate and place on letters J, M and D. 
They created a "Bean to Bar" book.  We stapled the pages together and they placed the photo cards inside. 

Geckos are fast and good at hiding. They have long tails that can detach to save them from danger, then grow back later. Geckos have different patterns on their skin.
Australian Aboriginal dot art is an art form that is thousands of years old. The dots are painted to depict symbols, patterns and animals. This type of art was used for ceremonial purposes or as a form of storytelling. During this Invitation to Create, children explored the technique of dot art by painting with a cotton swab. Children used their own ideas and creativity to plan their dot designs. 
We built letter M with stickers and acted like frog leaping to draw humps like the lower case m. We took turns placing the gecko cards in numerical order and then they closed their eyes, I took a gecko out of the mix and they had to figure out what gecko was missing!

Orchids grow on tree trunks in the understory. They grow in a variety of patterns colors and sizes. Orchids grow well in the Amazon rainforest because of the warm, humid climate. During this Invitation to Create, children were free to follow their own creative processes and take creative risks. Thy used pipe cleaners, paper, napkin and soufflé cup.  They did a great job!
​We built orchids with shapes and they were encouraged to draw an orchid with their favorite flower color in their journals!

The understory is a dark place with small trees and bushes. Animals such as monkeys, geckos and praying mantises travel up and down vines and branches in the understory layer. Cocoa trees can grow in the shade of the understory. It is humid and damp in the understory.
Monkeys play and chatter in the understory layer. Some monkeys, like the howler monkey, have tails that can grip branches.  These types of tails are called prehensile tails.  They made a monkey mask.  We talked about the type of foods monkeys like to eat and made a bunch of chatter noise!  They explored different ways a monkey could hang on twine. 
They colored letter M and sorted letters Jj and Mm. 

Not much change this week.......I am keeping my fingers crossed that we can actually grow a root or two!
We used stickers to form letter J and sorted upper/lowercase Jj's.