Patrons to the cafe included parents, grandparents and school administration. The second-graders designed colorful menus and helped set the tables for their guests.
Twenty-seven guests were escorted to their seats by second-grade hosts and the waiters and waitresses took the orders. Items on the menu included specialties such as Monkey Bread, Ants on a Log, Pineapple Dip, Pineapple Cake, chocolate, coffee and tropical punch.
Students also used this opportunity to apply their math skills and money to a real life experience. Each item was assigned a monetary value. After serving the guests, the students had to compute the amount of the bill and figure change from a $20 bill.
Cafe entertainment included a rain forest fact session, where each student had memorized their part. Several students helped compose a Rain Forest Rap which the whole class performed. The room was decorated in shades of green with student work as the accent. The main attraction was The Great Kapok Tree, a bigger-than-life tree which formed the canopy of the rain forest room.
The Rainforest Cafe was a culmination of three weeks of activities which integrated all areas of the second-grade curriculum. Students researched a chosen rain forest animal using World Book Online.
They wrote reports which were designed with PowerPoint and added graphics. The class made colorful macaws as an art project, read about Jane Goodall and the chimpanzees, and practiced map skills while learning about the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Rain forest collages decorated the room. Students used writing skills as they composed acrostic poems about the jungle areas of the world. Books by Lynn Cherry, an environmentalist, were shared.