Looking forward to sunnier weather we blasted back into the rest of the term with a unit on Africa. First off the children dived into role-playing with cuddly African animals, safari gear, backpacks, binoculars etc, primarily to get the whole enjoyment thing going, but also to see what their perceptions of Africa were.
Monkey Girl read The Boy one of our favourite books, We All Went on Safari which is based in Tanzania and from where we learnt to count to ten in Swahili, many moons ago!
...and then we chatted about how diverse Africa actually is - it's not all about safaris and zebras. To understand this is more depth they looked at the map of all the African countries and painted flags for each country. We haven't finished them all, but they did some great painting...
and then we pinned them to our map.
Africa books
African animals
I sprayed some cotton wool pads with some of Papa's aftershave and spread them around the floor with others which had no scent. The Boy pretended he was a lion and used his sense of smell to identify which ones smelt like Papa. He loved it and later kept one on his desk "for when I need to smell Papa". Cute :)
African artefacts. Papa lived in Namibia for four years and has some exciting artefacts from his time there:
A lion's claw
Lion's tooth
Crocodile tooth
Cheetah fur
Shark tooth
(All legally acquired!)
Monkey Girl made this lovely Hama bead picture. I do love my kiddlets :)
We listened to this beautiful African music compilation and the kiddies danced and played to the beat!
We study poetry on Mondays to it seemed opportune to read an African themed one. I found this Song of Africa - a Traditional (Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo):
The fish goes... Hip!
The bird goes... Viss!
The monkey goes... Gnan!
I start to the left,
I twist to the right,
I am the fish
That slips through the water,
That slides,
That twists,
That leaps!
Everything lives,
Everything dances,
The fish goes... Hip!
The bird goes... Viss!
The monkey goes... Gnan!
The bird flies away,
Flies, flies, flies,
Goes, returns, passes,
Climbs, floats, swoops,
I am the bird!
Everything lives,
Everything dances,
The fish goes... Hip!
The bird goes... Viss!
The monkey goes... Gnan!
The monkey! From branch to
branch
Runs, hops, jumps,
With his wife and baby,
Mouth stuffed full, tail in air,
Here’s the monkey, here’s the
Monkey!
Everything lives,
Everything dances,
The fish goes... Hip!
The bird goes... Viss!
The monkey goes... Gnan!
And we finished the day with maths, Spanish and trampolining lessons.
