Curriculum & Lesson Extensions
Biodiversity & Peace: Montessori Curriculum
Our Biodiversity & Peace curriculum Overview and Resource book are available to you as downloads. This original curriculum was designed by tropical ecologists and Montessori teachers and can be used in conjunction with an EcoTour to the Children's Eternal Rainforest, or just in the classroom and schoolyard.
The Curriculum Overview provides you with the history, rationale, and framework for the program. This can help you better understand how to use the lessons in conjunction with a trip to the rainforest, or justify planning one to school administration and parents!
The Resource Book has activities and lesson ideas for you to use in your classroom. Don't forget to look around our website for additional articles and pictures you can use in class!
Curriculum Overview
Resource Book: Montessori
Biodiversity & Peace: NGSS-Aligned for Public Schools
Enjoy all of the lessons in our original Biodiversity & Peace Resource Book, adapted for public schools and schools using NGSS. You may reference the Curriculum Overview above for background on the topics and on the Children's Eternal Rainforest. This curriculum can be used in conjunction with an EcoTour to the Children's Eternal Rainforest or just in the classroom and schoolyard.
Resource Book: NGSS-Aligned
General Rainforest Ecology Resources:
This article on HowStuffWorks is a basic introduction to rainforest structure and ecology.
Lesson Extension: Butterfly Bonanza!
Lessons that build and expand on our Butterfly Bonanza lesson. You may choose to use these after a classroom visit.
Butterfly Biodiversity
Links to additional resources, background information and curriculum relevant to the Butterfly Bonanza lesson:
Butterfly School, a website with educational resources for teachers and students, created by the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Chesterfield, MO.
Migration Models: A Collaborative Game Design Challenge
This three-session unit - developed with input from our friends at Prairie Land Conservancy, Leopold Landscape Alliance, and our brilliant high school volunteers - challenges upper elementary and middle school students to use game play as a tool for scientific modeling and science communication.
Lesson Plans
Student Material: Investigation Log / Planning Document
Student Material: Bird Profiles
Coming Soon
Rainforest Plant Adaptations
This plant adaptation card game from the National Park Service explores adaptations across several biomes. It would be a great introduction to a unit or pre-FOTR visit lesson.
This video explores fecal seed dispersal by spider monkeys in the rainforest, and how restoring corridors to connect forest fragments can provide the mobility spider monkeys need to effectively re-seed deforested areas.