Our Rain Forest Bulletin Board

Hi everyone!  I thought I'd show you our rain forest bulletin board! I was trying to think of some sort of rain forest themed art project that all of my kids could do. I couldn't really find something that I thought was simple enough, but also let them be creative and show their personalities. Then I came up with the idea of making monkeys and putting their faces on them!

I drew my own monkey pattern on a Dr. Pepper case and cut it out for the kids to trace. Then all I had to do was supply them with construction paper of every color. They got to pick out the color for every body part, trace it and cut it out, and glue their monkeys together. While they were working, I took pictures of their faces and printed them out. They then glued their faces onto the monkeys' heads!

We also made some tissue paper flowers to brighten up our bulletin board. Here is the result! (I edited the picture by covering up the monkeys' faces, for confidentiality and all that,)

My favorite is Noddy's monkey. He was absent when all of the others made theirs, so I let him do his today. He loves art, and he also loves superheroes. After the kids had gone home today, I found Noddy's monkey, and realized that he had added a few personal touches to his monkey... a superhero cape and an "S" on his shirt!  (Also do you get my "Hey, hey, we're the monkeys" reference?)

I was so proud of Noddy and Martin today. We've been practicing counting money, using Touch Math, every day for the past few weeks. Most of the time we've been practicing by playing my Save The Rainforest Touch Money game. I knew they have both gotten good at counting coins using the Touch Points. For Independent Work today, I gave them a packet from the Touch Money curriculum, where they would have to count the money without actually seeing the Touch Points. (They could draw in their own Touch Points if they wanted to.) Well, both of the boys completed the entire packet within half an hour. It turns out, they can both count money, without having the Touch Points already added for them, with at least 80% accuracy! 

This is HUGE! These are two boys who were not at all familiar with money just eight weeks ago. If you gave them a pile of coins, they just counted the number of coins, whether they were quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. (So if you gave them 2 quarters, 5 dimes, 2 nickels, and 4 pennies, they would tell you that they had 13 cents.) For them to now be successful at counting coins without even using Touch Points? I could burst! 

Now all we have to do is keep on practicing so that maybe it will stick permanently in their brains by the time summer vacation starts.