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NEW TOWN – Kids in Jennifer Waterman’s first-grade class at Edwin Loe Elementary School in New Town may live thousands of miles from a tropical rain forest, but they still felt like they were in the tropics last month.

Waterman goes all out when she teaches her students about science.

“I turn my classroom into a rain forest,” said Waterman. “I bring in tropical plants and have different pictures that I put up.”

Students who walk into her classroom on the first day have a surprise in store.

“They just walk in and boom, rain forest!” said Waterman, who also plays the sounds of the rain forest when they are working independently.

There are also several children’s books she uses with information about the rain forest. She also uses an app on an iPad that enables her students to take a virtual tour of the rain forest.

She drapes fabric from the ceiling and has stuffed toy monkeys with Velcro hands hanging from the “vines” on the ceiling. There are also tropical plants in the classroom.

“For three weeks, I teach my students about the different levels of the rain forest, where they can find all the tropical rain forests in the world, how many different types of plants and animals and insects call the rain forest home, and how everything in the rain forest depends on each other for survival,” said Waterman, who first began teaching this unit when she was teaching in Florida.

The lesson also helps her students begin to understand how everything is connected.

She describes how a colony of ants lives inside a plant and protects the plant from invaders, while the plant also gives the ants the food they need to survive.

The first-graders will also learn about the importance of biodiversity and the dangers of deforestation.

“They get really fascinated by the fact that 80 percent of the insects around the world live in the rain forest,” said Waterman. “There isn’t one layer of the rain forest that doesn’t have insects on it.”

The children will also be assigned to do basic research papers and will be asked to find the answers to four or five questions about one particular plant that they choose to write about.

Waterman said she was always fascinated by the rain forest. She saw an example online of how one teacher had transformed her room into a rain forest and knew she could do an even better job. She created a three-week unit that meets all the educational standards for the early elementary level.

“It became a big thing at the school I was at in Florida,” she said.

Waterman said this is the first year she has taught in New Town. Her 17 first-graders will now enjoy the same learning opportunities as Waterman’s classes in Florida.