habitat lesson ideas

The Oregon state flower the Trillium


I'm having a hard time doing my lesson plans for the up coming week. What can I say, I'm just not feeling it. Usually I love looking for lessons, going through my archives of lessons and pictures deciding what to do this week, but it is not happening today. It could be the rain, or the fact that it is a holiday and I'm crashing from too much sugar eaten with my little nieces, nephews and cousins.
It could be that the principal called me in on Friday to say they want to decrease my hours by 20% (that magic number that basically makes it impossible for me to pick up another school to make up my hours but enough to kill my salary. ) More on that after I have a long chat with my union rep. Any way... theoretically I'm taking some of my kids art to a earth day/neighborhood environment art show that the neighborhood association is planing for the end of April. They keep wavering on if the event will happen or not so I'm not sure if I need to plug ahead with projects based on their theme or just call it a loss.

We had talked about having the kids do works of art based on the flora and fauna of Oregon, particular the habit of the creak that is near our neighborhood. I like that idea because 2nd grade is studying habitat right now. I guess this being arbor and earth month that I should go forward with this idea.

So what animals or plants would you find by a creek in Oregon
Plants:
trillium
nootka rose
evergreen huckleberry
salmon berry
swamp rose
fern
Oregon iris
swamp lantern
wild strawberry
cattail
Salal


birds:
red wing black bird
mallard
wood duck
Harlequin duck
goldfinch
stellers jay
scrub jay
Chick Dee
Allen's humming bird
blue heron
Western Meadowlark
Yellow headed blackbird
Western bluebird
yellow breasted chat


fish:
salmon (coho and Chinook)
rainbow trout
sturgeon
brook trout

insects/bugs:
dragon fly
butterfly(Oregon swallowtail, Oregon silver spot (endangered) Anis swallowtail, western sulphur, western tailed blue, monarch, fenders blue (threatened) )
crawdads
lady bug
may fly
back swimmers

So what can we do with this information?
I am seeing several ideas here:
2nd grade patterns and watercolor bugs and butterflies with black sharpie
3rd grade painted paper ducks (I need the 3rd grade on Monday to make the painted paper for the other classes and then have them do the project the next week) I think we should stick to mallard and wood ducks
4th grade: Watercolor crayon or oil pastel Georgia O'Keeffe inspired state plants/flowers
5th grade: Color pencil state birds
1st grade: I think we will make a "rainbow" of trout. I will give students a trout black line and have them glue an assortment of items in one color onto their fish. I group students by table groups so i will have a representation of each color of the rainbow.

kinder: something with sheep.

Like skills: this sheep watercolor resist lesson from art project for kids that i love

other life skills class will talk about the rain outside as part of April showers bring may flowers and do this umbrella and rain project from all kids network