One Big Rainforest 'Do' - Year 2

Year 2 took part in the Eden Project’s One Big Rainforest ‘Do’, a streamed live lesson, as part of Earth Day 2026. This was a fabulous link to our class book at the moment, ‘Dear Earth’ by Isabel Otter, in which the little girl writes a letter to the Earth. She wants everyone to know how special our planet is. This is something that we considered during our last English text, ‘We are water protectors!’, and Earth Day’s theme this year ‘Our power, our planet’ continues to prompt our thinking about sustainability and what we can achieve as part of our school and wider community.

The live interactive lesson sparked our curiosity as it took the children on a fun filled journey through the rainforest biome to explore how plants, people, food and wildlife are all connected. They solved riddles, asked questions and learned simple ways we can help others.

Some of the things we found out...

The ‘Sandbox’ or ‘Monkey don’t climb tree’ is the most dangerous tree in the rainforest biome. The sap burns your skin, it has sharp spines and it has exploding seeds which shoot out at an amazing 150mph!

A cacao tree can produce about 2kg of chocolate a year (about 18 bars), but harvesting cacao is a dangerous job. The workers also don’t always get paid very much and some of the workers are young children. The presenters explained that if you buy Fairtrade products, that shows you that the farmers have been paid fairly and it also helps local communities.

The tank bromeliad plant, related to the pineapple plant, is a favourite for poison dart frogs which drink from a small tank of water which gathers within it and in which they also lay their eggs. In return, the frog poos and gives the plant extra nutrients.

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