Nature In Your Nurture

Books

🌿🌻Who’s Hiding in the Rainforest? by Katherine McEwen
In this cute board book, children can explore rainforest animals from around the world with simple lift-the-flap facts. Learn about toucans, ocelots, capybaras, piranhas, squirrel monkeys, and many more in this beautifully-illustrated book!

🌿🌻Nerdy Babies: Rainforests by Emmy Kastner
This book explores facets of rainforest life in simple illustrations and text explanations. Learn the four layered ecosystems of the rainforest, and the biodiversity and global distribution of both temperate and tropical rainforests. I love the message that scientists, like babies, are still discovering new things (and new species) in the rainforests of our world.

🌿🌻Over in the Jungle by Marianne Berkes (illustrated by Jeannete Canyon)
One of many Berkes songbooks following the tune of “Over in the Meadow,” this book explores animals living in the rainforests of South America. Count dart frogs, boa constrictors, parrots, sloths, leaf cutter ants, and more! The illustrator, Jeannette Canyon, uses brightly colored clay to create three dimensional relief art photographed for this book!

🌿🌻“Slowly, Slowly, Slowly,” Said the Sloth by Eric Carle
In this verbose board book, a sloth hangs upside down in a tree and ponders why he is so different from the other rainforest animals. He explains articulately that he may do things very, very slowly, but he is not lazy!

🌿🌻I is for Iguana by DK Publishing (illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about iguanas from around the world, including the green iguana of the Amazon rainforest!

🌿🌻J is for Jaguar by DK Publishing (illustrated by Jean Claude)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about jaguars in the rainforests of South America.

🌿🌻M is for Monkey by DK Publishing (illustrated by Marc Pattenden)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about monkeys from around the world, including the spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, and tamarins of South America.

🌿🌻P is for Parrot by DK Publishing (illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about parrots from around the world, including macaws of South America and cockatoos of Australia.

🌿🌻Our World: Colombia by Alexandra Alessandri (illustrated by Mayu Montoya)
This bright illustrated board book explores a day in the life of a child in Colombia where the Amazon and Chocó rainforests can be found. Learn a little bit about Colombian cuisine, games, traditions, and language. A glossary of Spanish words provides translations and explanations.

🌿Over & Under the Rainforest by Kate Messner (illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal)
In this story, a parent and child traverse a suspension rope bridge through the trees, observing animals down below and above them in the rainforest canopy!

🌿The Umbrella by Jan Brett
A little boy looking to spot some animals in the cloud forests of the Amazon loses his umbrella to the waters of the river. Some of those very animals climb aboard the makeshift boat until it cannot contain its passengers!

🌿Happy Sloth Day! by April Pulley Sayre
With an iconic blend of simple verses and photo illustrations (at 1-2 sentences per page), this book guides readers through a day in the life of three-toed sloths (and their arboreal neighbors) before introducing the more-nocturnal two-toed sloths as the daylight fades. Side panels provide additional facts for optional extended reading.

🌿Secrets of the Rainforest by Carron Brown (illustrated by Alyssa Nassner)
This Shine-A-Light book does not require a flashlight if you have a good sunny day, but reads just as well without the shadow images. Explore the different habitats utilized by rainforest plants and animals in this illustrated nonfiction book.

🌿Singing in the Rain (illustrated by Tim Hopgood)
Another lovely illustration project from Hopgood, the first verse of this classic song is portrayed through children in a rainbow of raincoats walking through the city, but at the end of the verse as the song repeats (the original second verse is left out), they are transported by umbrella to the nearby rainforest where they continue to explore through the rainstorm.

🌿Rainforest by Julia Groves
Beautiful high-contrast mixed-media artwork illustrates poetic descriptions of animal life in the rainforest.  At the end of the book there are paragraph descriptions of each animal depicted.

🌿Welcome to the Greenhouse by Jane Yolen (illustrated by Laura Regan)
This green house is made of trees–the book describes the colors and sounds of life in the biodiverse rainforest of Central and South America with beautiful and detailed illustrations.

🌿Forest by Brendan Kearney
In this illustrated story, two friends adventure into the rainforest and quickly find an area where all the trees have been cleared for logging and farming. They meet many displaced animals who they help find a protected part of the rainforest where they can live safely. The book also talks about ways to reduce demand for paper products and palm oil that contribute to deforestation in the rainforest.

Biblioburro – Jeanette Winter
A true story, the Biblioburro is a donkey library. A literature-loving teacher leads two book-bearing donkeys through the mountains of Colombia to deliver books to the children of remote villages.

Creative Art Opportunities

🦜Paint with vanilla mixed into paint
🦜Collage with leaf confetti
🦜Dot art on a paper plate
🦜Paint with jello mix (try agar-based vegan gelatins)
🦜Drip water over dot marker art using a pipette
🦜Create with a wet string dipped in paints

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Scent tubes – coffee, vanilla, chocolate
⛅️Rainforest animal toys (frogs, fruit bats, snakes, capybara, jaguar)
⛅️Explore coffee beans in a sensory bin
⛅️Use a spray bottle to mist water like an afternoon rainshower in the rainforest
⛅️Use wooden blocks and tree rounds* to create a rainforest with different levels
⛅️Use bricks or large stones to create two riverbanks in a sensory table of water. Add water to watch the river flood and submerge much of the forest floor in the rainy season.
🌿Hang from a playground bar or low tree branch like a sloth
🌿Climb low tree or logs
🌿Observe tree canopy during hike
🌿Hike during light rain

Songs to Learn and Sing

“Raining Like Magic” – Raffi (you’ll find the recorded version longer with parts repeated more often)

It’s raining like magic
Falling like starlight
Raining like magic
It’s raining life

The forest is breathing
Ferns are rejoicing
Trees are all singing
It’s raining life

And ohhhh, what a feeling
On this glorious, rain-drumming evening
Hey, hey, I feel like dancing
All night long… and into the light

It’s raining like magic
Falling like starlight
Raining like magic
It’s raining life

The forest is breathing
Ferns are rejoicing
Trees are all singing
It’s raining life

It’s raining like magic
Raining like magic
Raining like magic
It’s raining life!

“Down in the Jungle” – (Tune of “Three Little Fishies”)

Down in the jungle where nobody goes
There’s a great big jaguar washing his nose
With a rub-a-dub here, and a rub-a-dub there
That’s the way he washes his nose!

Diddly-dee, a boogie boogie woogie
Diddly-dee, a boogie boogie woogie
Diddly-dee, a boogie boogie woogie
That’s the way he washes his nose

Down in the jungle where nobody goes
There’s a little capybara washing his nose…

“Sol Solecito” – I learned this adaptation in 2020, but understand that there may be older and more authentic versions

Sol solecito
Callientame un poquito
Por hoy por manana
Por toda le semana

Luna lunera
Cascabellera
Manana volare
Porque el mundo me espera

“Five Little Monkeys” – Also to the tune of “Three Little Fishies;” I use alligator here, but American crocodiles do live in South America alongside caimans.

Five little monkeys swinging in a tree
Teasing Mr. Alligator, “Can’t catch me!”
Along comes Mr. Alligaor… quiet as can be…
And… SNAPS that monkey right out of that tree!

Four little monkeys…

“The Sloth’s Lazy Lullaby” – Nursery Rhymes 123 (They have a whole album of original jungle songs)

“Monkeys in a Tree” – Nursery Rhymes 123

“Hungry Piranhas” – Nursery Rhymes 123

“Capybara Song” – Animals on Screen

NIYN – Rainforest on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.

Rainforest Facts

• New World monkeys are native to North and South America.  Some have prehensile tails that can grasp branches as they climb.
  Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia.  Their tails are not prehensile, and they’re actually more closely related to apes than to the New World monkeys
• The Amazon River is the largest in the world by volume of water, and the second longest in length. When the river floods each year, the rainforest floor of the Amazon floodplain is covered in water for another 140,000 square miles.
• Poison dart frogs live in the lower levels of the rainforest. Their name comes from the practice of tipping arrows with toxins from the skin of several species. Captive dart frogs do not synthesize toxins the way they do in the wild, and scientists believe it’s because they do not consume the same insects in captivity that they would in the rainforest. After their eggs hatch, adults carry their tadpoles on their backs to small pools or streams. Some species even lay their eggs inside the water-catching leaves of bromeliads!
• Two-toed sloths are primarily nocturnal and have pig-like noses.  Three-toed sloths are primarily diurnal and have round button noses.  Sloths descend from the trees about once a week to defecate on the ground where they are slow and vulnerable.  They are, however, adept swimmers..
• Vanilla beans and cacao beans are native to the rainforests of South America, but coffee trees are introduced. Native to Sudan and Ethiopia in northeastern Africa, they’re grown widely in Latin America.
• Bananas were introduced to South America in the 1500s.
• Not all rainforests are tropical– the Pacific Northwest of North America features Temperate Rainforests.