Around the World Africa Units

 We've been working on Around the World Homeschool Curriculum . Africa was a little hard to divide, so we kind of did it in regions, but not perfectly. Here is what we did over about three weeks.

Books:

As always, we read many great spines on these countries, but here are some extra picture books we read:

Both of these books were read throughout learning about Africa.

Africa, Amazing Africa (checked out enough from the library over the years that we finally bout it)

Africa is not a Country

Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace (Kenya)

Sulwe (Kenya)

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain (Kenya)

Rhino in the House: The Story of Saving Samia (Kenya)

The Lion's Whiskers: An Ethiopian Folktale

Deep in the Sahara

The Lion and The Mouse

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale

We All Went on Safari: A Counting Journey through Tanzania

Fossil Huntress: Mary Leakey, Paleontologist

The Tortoise and the Hare

Lala Salama: A Tanzanian Lullaby

Hippo Goes Bananas

Pages from The Wild Life of Animals

 

Spread from A Place Called Home

Page from If You Lived Here

Big Picture Book of Planet Earth

Activities:

Flags from Little Passports

Maze from Around the World Mazes

Recipe:

We had Shakshuka from the Global Feast cookbook and African Yellow Rice.

Read Aloud:

During our time studying Africa, we also studied the desert biome. We read The Secret Explorers Desert Disappearance to relate to that, then we read Lions at Lunchtime and Madagascar Madness for Africa.

Art:

Archer watched an Art for Kids Hub video on how to draw a giraffe. 

He practiced mixing paint colors to make a mane, then cut out a face on construction paper to complete this lion. 

For this one, he painted the sunset, the glued on all the black pieces for the foreground. My neighbor was kind enough to cut out the animals for us with her Silhouette. 

See other Africa posts here:

Coral Reef Vocabulary Cards

 

I've been working on making more vocabulary cards and Little Reader lessons for my youngest (I've been having trouble uploading Little Reader lessons, so send me a message if you'd like the file). This Coral Reef set to match the Coral Reef Toob, is the most recent.

Print the Coral Reef Vocabulary Cards Here

Check out other vocabulary cards:

Tot School: Ovals

We have been working on a shape a week, as well as doing other themed activities. This week was ovals and Spring Flowers. 

These are the shape related activities. Juniper was 21 months.

Coloring some ovals (Printable found here). She is able to match all the colors.

Play dough included some fondant cutters, some oval gems, a stamp and design roller that had ovals.

Tracing some ovals in her dry erase center. She still needs a lot of help tracing, but she enjoys it. (Printable found here)

Painting an oval. She has been really into exploring watercolors lately, so that's what she chose.

Size sorting some ovals.

Using her beginner pattern blocks.

Exploring with learning links. These are definitely a challenge for her to connect and disconnect.

This week, I put her dot page on her little magnetic  easel and she used pom pom magnets to fill in the circles.

Playing with her "emotion" avocados, because they're almost ovals!

Tot School: Spring Flowers

For Tot School, we are currently doing both shapes and other themes concurrently. Here are the activities we did for "spring flowers." Juniper was 21 months.

This was a play dough tray I made for her to explore. It had chocolate play dough, little terracotta pots, Toob flowers, buttons and gems. It smelled wonderful but was messy!

She also used her flower play dough set(the price on this one seems to jump around like crazy, it was pretty inexpensive when I got it). It is one we get out pretty regularly.

Spring flower sensory bin. I used terracotta pots, various types of flowers and a springy base (green rice and spaghetti with multicolored star pasta)

Playing with her flower builders.

Flower paper punches. She loves the activity, but definitely still needs a lot of help.

She did the flowers out of her beginner pattern blocks.

Spring flower tray puzzles. Some of these she does fine on her own, some she needs help.

Flower matching cards and flower toob. She could do several, but lost interest quickly.

Flower light table page with  magnetic bingo chips and dot page with dot markers.

Books, of course! We got out lots of spring and flower books. Juniper surprised me in how much she liked some of the "older" books in addition to the board books.

Hope is a Hop

The Hidden Rainbow

First Notes of Spring

There's a Bird on your Head

Are You Ready to Play Outside?

 Bear Finds Eggs

Splat the Cat Oopsie Daisy (absolute favorite this year)

Planting a Rainbow

Don't Touch That Flower

Escargot and the Search for Spring

Little Blue Truck's Springtime

Peek Inside Springtime

A Duckling for Daniel

Baby Loves Spring

Listen to the Rain

Peep Inside a Bird's Nest

Here are some of the early readers I pulled for this theme. I pulled them from Meet the Digraphs, Meet the Sight Words Level 3, Non-Fiction Sight Words Readers Level D and a random scholastic pack.

Spring Dot Pages and Light Table Printables

My kids have really been enjoying light table play lately, so for spring, I made them some printables to use with it. I made a flower and a butterfly, but with dots and without.

To use on the light table, I just printed the pages on to  blank transparencies. I also set out a container with magnetic bingo chips.

I was able to print the same pages on regular paper to use with  Dot markers.

 Print the Spring Dot Pages and Light Table Printables Here