Geography - Africa Edition

Social studies this week has been African geography.  I didn't worry too much about the countries and their capitals, since there are 50-some on the continent and at least half the capital cities have names that we could never hope to pronounce correctly.  And it seems like so few of those countries have the same names, boundaries, capitals, etc that they did when I was in middle school and memorized them all.  Didn't really do me much good except give me a little head start on time-wasting games at Sporcle (If you're not familiar with Sporcle, go visit.  Thousands of trivia quizzes on all kinds of subjects.  Then you can join the ranks of the sporcle-addicted along with me).  But we did do some fill-in-the-blank maps so the kids had a general idea of where some of the countries were in relation to the major topographical features of the continent.  I was pleasantly surprised how well they did marking their maps with the Sahara and Kalahari Deserts; the Nile, Congo, and Niger Rivers; Lake Victoria; the Atlas Mountains; and Mt Kilimanjaro.  They easily identified Madagascar...



Yesterday we watched some clips from the BBC's Planet Earth mini-series, portions of the episodes on Deserts, Great Plains, and Jungles.

       The images in the series are just stunning.  I borrowed the DVDs from our library, and they have some of the most breathtaking footage of scenery and animals.  I highly recommend them.

Today we read two books - The Nile - River in the Sand by Molly Aloian, and 24 Hours Desert from DK.



I have some art planned for later today that the kids are looking forward to - they will be sketching some African animals using guidance from our textbook Geography Through Art.