Cammie & Cooper

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You can have fun across the curriculum with Saving the Rain Forest With Cammie and Cooper. Use the book to kick off a special unit about the rain forest, to inspire creative writing, to expand vocabulary, or to discuss what is real and what is imaginary.

Reading     Read the book aloud or have children read it.

Glossary: Rain Forest Words

• rain forest - a forest of trees that gets at least 100 inches of rain in a year. 

• tropical - the area that is about 1500 miles on either side of the equator all the way around the Earth.

  • Look at a globe and find the equator. Wrap a two-inch-wide strip of green paper around the globe right over the equator. That’s where the tropical rain forests are — except, of course, they are not in any ocean.

• skyscraper - a very tall building. Some of the trees in the rain forest are as tall as a 20-story building. 

• extinct - all of a certain kind of animal or plant, which are no longer living and no longer exist on Earth. 

• guide - a person who leads others on a trip and shows them the way. 

• fig - a sweet fruit shaped like a small pear. The figs on a strangler fig tree are very little but so sweet that lots of birds and animals love to eat them.

Can you draw a picture or write a sentence with one or more of the words in the list above?

Glossary: Noisy Synonyms 

• talkative - talking a lot, liking to talk. 

• squawked - made a loud, harsh cry. Chickens and parrots are two animals that squawk. 

• screeched - made a harsh, high cry. When a driver jams on the brakes, the tires screech.

• shrieked - made a loud, sharp cry. A person might shriek if he is surprised by something that scares him. 

• screamed - made a loud, shrill cry. Many people scream when they ride a roller coaster. 

• shouted - made a loud cry or call. 

• roared - made a loud, deep, rumbling sound. Lions roar. 

• howled - made a long, wailing cry. Dogs and wolves are two animals that howl.

Synonyms are words that mean almost the same thing. Are there any synonyms in the list of words above? You might test the words by using your voice. When you are talkative, does it sound the same as when you roar? Does a shriek sound like a scream? (Sorry, teachers. This sounds like fun to me as I sit in my quiet office....)

Glossary: Cutting Down the Rain Forest

• clearing - a piece of land that has been cleared of all trees. 

• foreman - a person in charge of a group of workers. 

• crew - a group of people working together. 

• bulldozer - a tractor with a large blade like a shovel in front. 

• chain saw - a power saw that cuts with teeth moving on an endless chain

Can you find a picture of a clearing, a foreman, his crew, a bulldozer, and a chain saw on two side-by-side pages in the book? Choose one or more of the words above and draw your own picture. Add labels or write a sentence about your picture.

Glossary: Words to Act Out 

• swirled - moved with a twisting, curving motion; whirled around. 

• plopping - dropping down heavily. 

• yawned - opened her mouth wide and breathed deeply because she was getting sleepy. 

• fluffing - shaking to make something soft and fluffy. 

Can you swirl around? Can you plop down on a chair or plop down on the floor? Can you yawn? Can you fluff your feathers? What, you have no feathers? Can you fluff your hair or fluff your shirt?

Reading Readiness

Look closely at one of the illustrations of Sunflower the parrot. Can you figure out why he is called Sunflower? (The yellow feathers on his shoulders look like a sunflower.)

2. What did Cammie learn about the rain forest that made her sad?
(People are cutting down the rain forest and the animals are losing their homes. Some of them even become extinct.) 
Dinosaurs are extinct. Are there any dinosaurs left on Earth? What if elephants became extinct? Would there be any elephants left on Earth?

3. What did Cammie and Cooper wish they could do?
(They wished they could go to the rain forest and tell people to stop cutting it down.)
Have you ever made a wish? What did you wish?

4. Suddenly Cammie and Cooper found themselves in a boat in the rain forest. How do you think they got there?
(As in many fairy tales, their wish was granted in a magical way. Sunflower was their magical guide to the rain forest.)

Real and Imaginary

• Could children really make their classroom look like a rain forest? Is the rain forest really a place where it is always summer and rain comes down like a waterfall? (Yes.)

• Could Cammie and Cooper really go to the rain forest in an instant with only a parrot for a guide? (No.)

• When does the story come back to what is real? (When Cammie and Cooper are suddenly home again.)

5. Read about the adventures that Cammie and Cooper have in the rain forest with rain forest animals. Which is your favorite adventure?

Make up a new adventure with a rain forest animal that isn’t in this book. (Jaguar, boa constrictor, toucan, tapir, paca, spider monkey, ocelot.) Draw a picture and write a sentence about what Cammie and Cooper do with the animal.

6. When Cammie talks to the foreman, what reasons does she give him for not cutting down the rain forest? (We need the trees, and without them, the animals lose their homes.) Did the foreman understand and agree with her? (Yes, when the foreman said, “OH,” he suddenly understood and immediately told his crew why they should stop cutting down the forest.)

7. Mr. Patterson tells Cammie that when enough people want to save the rain forest, we will find a way to do it. Do you think that reading and learning about rain forests will help us save the forests? (One answer could be: Yes, because the more we know about rain forests, the more we will care about them.)

Reading Enrichment/Drama 
Print the Cammie and Cooper paper dolls provided.                         Paper dolls

1. Have children color the paper dolls and accessories. If young children can’t cut them out, ask parent volunteers to cut them out.

2. Staple each paper doll to a wooden tongue depressor to make a stick puppet. Staple any of the accessory pieces, such as the crocodile, to tongue depressors, too, to make additional puppets.

3. Divide your class into small groups. Give each group a set of stick puppets. Ask each group to make up a story about Cammie and Cooper in the rain forest. Then have each group present its story as a puppet show. Play a tape of rainforest sounds for background.

1. Have children color one of the coloring pages. Ask children to write a sentence or sentences to describe what Cammie and Cooper are doing.

2. Cammie and Cooper really care about our environment. Have children write a new story about Cammie and Cooper and Sunflower taking on a different environmental problem, such as littering, throwing away too much garbage and filling up landfills, polluting our air and water, oil spills, etc.

3. Have children create a rain forest mural on a long sheet of paper. Or have them make stuffed paper animals to distribute around the classroom. Staple two drawings of a rain forest animal together. As you staple, stuff the animal with crumpled tissue paper. Add rain forest posters and books to your classroom rain forest.

1. Make a rain forest in your classroom. Build your rain forest in a small reading corner, or convert your entire classroom into a rain forest. Make tree trunks by covering carpet rolls with brown paper; add big green paper leaves. Twist brown butcher paper into vines. Add paper leaves and flowers and butterflies.

2. Ask children to bring in stuffed toy animals, tropical house plants, or even tropical pets, such as parrots, iguanas, or tarantulas.

3. Have children find out more about the animals in Saving the Rain Forest with Cammie and Cooper. (Parrot, crocodile, poison arrow frog, howler monkey, sloth, leaf-cutter ants, coati.) Help them find out about other rain forest animals.

4. Read about how children can help save the rain forest on the last page of Saving the Rain Forest with Cammie and Cooper.

5. Make paper butterflies with clothes pin bodies and pipe cleaner antennae.

6. Print the Cammie and Cooper bookmarks provided.                                     Bookmarks

7. Have children color the bookmarks. Then have them make their own “Save the Rain Forest” bookmarks.

1. Use the pattern provided to make a paper bromeliad (a rain forest plant) with a poison-arrow frog.

Bromeliad pattern.

2. Make big paper flowers and mount them on florist sticks for your classroom rain forest or tape them to paper vines.

We hope you have fun with our book, Saving the Rain Forest with Cammie and Cooper. Thanks for reading it and using it in your classroom.