I filled our travel suitcase with African books, pictures, games and animals for the children to explore.
We read the Greedy Zebra and then the children used marbles and paint to make a white zebra with black stripes and a black zebra with white stripes. This was so much fun!!! Check out Mama Jenn's blog for instructions.
We read 'Watering Hole' by the brilliant Graeme Base. I used plastic animals and put footprints in Crayola clay the night before. Aiden and Elle then matched the animals to the footprints by the watering hole.
Elle made the games Skisima and The Hyena from the, 'Math Games & Activities from Around the World' We played them throughout our Africa Unit.
We read, 'Safari in South Africa' and Aiden held up each animal as we read about it.
We studied these traditional African dwelling printables from St. Aidens Homeschool.
Elle and Aiden then created their own using cardboard boxes. They used these throughout the unit for pretend play.
We learned that Africa is approximately 3X the size of the size of the United States. There is a great curriculum guide at the BU African Studies center.
We found lots of fun crafts in the, "Traditional Crafts from Africa" book like using an egg carton to create Mancala board.
Aiden and Elle built a zoo. As the week went on it got bigger and bigger and bigger....
Aiden made stand-up African animals to practice his scissor skills (I did the more difficult cuts:)
I found the cute paper doll on the left at Education.com and the Egyptian one at Practical Pages. Aiden wanted nothing to do with them, so Elle ended up making both of them.
I cannot say enough good things about these Geopuzzles. Each country is its own piece. All of us have learned oodles about Geography using these.
That's it for Africa!
Happy travels!