{"id":23663,"date":"2009-04-08T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/rainforest-show-was-cookin-in-kent\/"},"modified":"2009-04-08T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-08T21:00:00","slug":"rainforest-show-was-cookin-in-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/rainforest-show-was-cookin-in-kent\/","title":{"rendered":"Rainforest show was cookin\u2019 in Kent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want to cook up a rainforest like those found in the Amazon basin?<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s pretty simple, really. According to one of the songs sung by second-graders at Emerald Park Elementary,<\/a> \u201cAll You Need is Dung.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, maybe, it\u2019s not all you need, but it\u2019s certainly a vital part of the recipe, according to the chefs.<\/p>\n

The song, along with several others, was part of a special assembly hosted March 31 at Emerald Park, part of a teaching unit on the rain forests. The idea of for the show was to look at the four layers of the rainforest – the forest floor, the understory, the canopy and the emergent layer – as a four-layer cake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted it to be like a Martha Stewart show,\u201d said music teacher Jim Abernathy, who wrote the show and the songs performed by the kids.<\/p>\n

Abernathy said he was trying to think of a metaphor for the layers of the rain forest when the idea struck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought \u2018let\u2019s turn it into a cooking show,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So together with the teachers, who supplied Abernathy with a copy of the lesson plans, the show began to take shape with students taking turns as chefs and soloists to add a little extra knowledge about the plants and animals that make up some of the planet\u2019s most diverse ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Complete with commercials (for \u201cBoa Constrictor Tape,\u201d which comes with a warning to not use around small animals, \u201cSloth Ketchup,\u201d which never comes out of the bottle, and the new \u201cHowler Monkey Alarm Clock,\u201d which is not for people with heart conditions or anxiety disorders), the songs take the audience through each layer of the forest before ending with \u201cRainforest Cake, nature\u2019s recipe\u201d at the end.<\/p>\n

The assembly was part of a larger unit called \u201cForest Explorers\u201d and funded by the Woodland Park Zoo, which hosted the Emerald Park second-graders April 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re learning about the rain forest and the layers and the animals in it,\u201d said Garrett Wong, 8.<\/p>\n

Among the things they are learning is the difference between a tropical rain forest and temperate one, like those found in Washington state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned that there\u2019s more birds and stuff in the tropical than there are in temperate,\u201d said Alana Drummond, 8, adding that the temperate forest is colder and missing the emergent layer at the top of the cake.<\/p>\n

The kids also learned about the various animals in the rain forest, according to Alina Tarasevich, 8, who called the jaguar \u201cdangerous\u201d and the chameleon \u201ccool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we hurt the rain forest any more, all the animals will be extinct and no one will be able to see them,\u201d said Drummond.<\/p>\n

In fact, for many of the kids, the favorite song seems to be \u201cJaguar Jazz,\u201d early in the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the tone of it,\u201d Tarasevich said, drawing agreement from the group.<\/p>\n

As part of their unit, the kids have learned not only about the animals in the amount of oxygen the trees in the forest produce, one of the reasons the classes also planted their own trees April 1.<\/p>\n

Second-grade teacher Peg Houden said the unit is one of the favorites through the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt totally gets them jazzed up,\u201d Houden said of the kids. \u201cThey really enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And not only that, according to principal Dean Ficken, the songs get them learning without the kids even realizing it sometimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing through music ho much the kids retain,\u201d he said. \u201cSongs stick with you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Want to cook up a rainforest like those found in the Amazon basin?<\/a>
\nWell, it\u2019s pretty simple, really. According to one of the songs sung by second-graders at Emerald Park Elementary,<\/a> \u201cAll You Need is Dung.\u201d
\nOK, maybe, it\u2019s not all you need, but it\u2019s certainly a vital part of the recipe, according to the chefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":23664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23663"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}