NGAkids Jungle Interactive
Inspired by the paintings of Henri Rousseau, NGAkids Jungle encourages children of all ages to create an imaginary landscape inhabited by an array of endearing animals. Players can mix and match the colorful characters, control the environment by changing weather and lighting conditions, or construct flowers, trees, and plants using special tools. An auto button generates random compositions, allowing youngsters to sample program options and experiment with special effects as a starting point for their own designs. (Requires Shockwave player)

More information about Henri Rousseau's Tropical Forest with Monkeys and Edouard Vuillard's Place Vintimille can be found on the National Gallery's Web site. The Gallery's Web site also features an in-depth study for teachers on the American artist Thomas Moran. His paintings were used to support the cause of establishing Yellowstone as the first national park of the United States.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/climate.htm
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences offers "Climates of the World: A Matching Game" that allows students to pair illustrations of children from around the world with their home countries, based on a comparison of clothing and regional climates.

http://www.epa.gov
The Environmental Protection Agency offers an Education Resources section for children and teachers including activities, curriculum resources, and information that relate art, science, and the environment. Students can create their own works of art about an environmental issue and submit them for display on the Web site. They may also investigate what other students (winners of the President's Environmental Youth Award) are doing to be responsible environmental stewards.

http://www.passporttoknowledge.com/rainforest/main.html
Teachers and students can learn about rain forest ecosystems (plants, animals, and insects) and geosystems (precipitation, area, and location) through online videos, activities, and informative text. Students may correspond with ecologists via e-mail.

http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/earthshots/slow/tableofcontents
The United States Geologic Survey site offers satellite images of environmental change and descriptions of issues affecting particular locations.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com
Click on the "Education" link of the National Geographic's Web site to reach "Maps and Geography," and "Lesson Plans," including hundreds of science and geography lesson plans for fifth and sixth graders. The site also features printable maps, photographs, online exhibitions, and a children's section.

Beneduce, Ann Keay. A Weekend with Winslow Homer.
New York: Rizzoli, 1996.
An elderly Winslow Homer invites readers into his Maine studio and talks about his life and development as an artist. Included are a selection of his paintings and prints, with notes on the reproductions, along with major events in his life.

Cherry, Lynne. The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest.
New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1990.
In the dense Amazon rain forest, a man chops down a great kapok tree. When he lies down at the foot of the tree and falls asleep, the creatures of the forest emerge to whisper in his ear. They beg him not to destroy their home and tell him how important every tree is. Lush illustrations of the rain forest include a map of the world's rain forests as they appear today and in the distant past.

Fleming, Denise. Where Once There Was a Wood.
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996.
This story addresses the ways wildlife is displaced by development. One section includes discussion ideas on environmental stewardship and suggestions for student and school responses to the issues. A related bibliography and contact information for the National Wildlife Federation is included. The illustrations consist of collages of landscape images. Students can use them as inspiration for their own collages about a local environment in danger, an endangered animal, or environmental stewardship.

Plazy, Gilles. A Weekend With Rousseau.
New York: Rizzoli, 1993.
This first-person narrative, interspersed with explanatory commentary in a different typeface, introduces painter Henri Rousseau's style, subjects, and friends. The reproductions show the contrast between Rousseau's paintings that were inspired by the sights of Paris and those derived from looking at images of plants and animals.

Miró
New York: Barrons Juveniles, 1995.
This book, from the Famous Artists series, looks at Spanish artist Joan Miró's brightly colored, lyrical, playful, and often fantastic paintings. The book can provide a broader context for appreciating Miró's painting The Farm included in this lesson.

John James Audubon: The Birds of America
[Cat. #VC146] (29 min.)
This video traces Audubon's career as a dedicated artist and naturalist who documented the pantheon of American birds and wrote extensively on nature and the American wilderness. With quotations from his journals and original drawings and engravings, it tells the story of Audubon's artistic development and his uncompromising dedication to publishing The Birds of America. The art is interwoven with live-motion nature photography and footage of sites prominent in Audubon's life and work.

Thomas "Yellowstone" Moran
[Cat. #VC160] (12 min.)
Moran's watercolors of Yellowstone were taken to the U.S. Congress to support a bill to establish Yellowstone as the first national park. Using archival photographs and footage of Yellowstone, this video recounts Moran's involvement with the survey expedition to the site in 1871.

George Inness
[Cat. #058, 18 slides, audio cassette (40 min.), and text]
This program surveys paintings by the nineteenth-century American painter George Inness, whose landscape painting The Lackawanna Valley is part of this lesson.