A six-week morning time guide on Africa geography, history, literature, music, family movies and arts and crafts.
As I was looking at the curriculum for Classical Conversations Cycle 1 for the next six weeks (13-18), I felt led to have a focus on Africa for our morning times. I love the idea of diving deep into one main subject or topic, to arouse our curiosity and motivate our learning. It unifies us as a family and creates a season of memory on our timeline to refer back to, “Do you remember when we studied everything about Africa?!” 🙂
I began to think of movies we could watch, missionaries we could read about, crafts and activities we could do, and all this brainstorming made me want to research and brainstorm some more ideas! So here’s the result of my recent indulgence, if you want to call it that. 🙂 Some ideas you may want to glean from, some you may not.
Our plan is to use our morning time to briefly go over our Classical Conversations memory work, ending with geography, in which we’ll mostly be mapping regions of Africa. Then we’ll rotate through these topics, saving some for the afternoon activities and evening read-aloud or movie nights as well.
Morning Time
We’ll spend an hour each morning as a family reading the Bible, briefly going over our CC memory work, African geography mapping and tracing, and then rotating through some of these books. We’ll focus on one a day. So maybe every Monday we’ll read Window on the World and then pray for that country throughout the week, and Wednesday’s Ancient World Echoes, and Thursdays, Story of the World. I kind of go with the flow and whatever the Spirit leads, but that’s a general idea.
Window on the World will help us learn about regions of the world that we can pray for, and how we can specifically pray each week for a different country or group of people in Africa. I picked out the following countries that we’ll rotate through.
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Republic of Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Zimbabwe
- Madagascar
Story of the World (Volumes 1-4) – We read some of these in the beginning of the year when we studied ancient Egypt in Volume 1, but there is more about Africa in other volumes.
- Volume 2 – Chapter 29: African Kingdoms (Gold, Salt, Ghana, Mali, Songhay)
- Volume 4 – Chapter 10: The Suez Canal
- Volume 4 – Chapter 32: Africa after World War II
- Volume 4 – Chapter 34: Dictators in Africa (Freedom in the Congo)
Ancient World Echoes – We will be going back and reading the first six weeks, which consist of fairy tales and folk lore from Africa. We read some of them at the beginning of the year, but I think it will be neat to read them again as we study that region of the world in geography, and can identify what we are reading with that area of the world.
Missionary Stories
It’s a passion of mine to learn from testimonies and stories of how God was/is at work in the lives of others, and I’m set on exposing the kids to these God stories as well. I found six missionaries that we want to focus on, and I was excited several of them were already in books that I had in my house!
- Mary Slessor
- Hero Tales has a chapter on her story with good reflection questions.
- I also reserved Mary Slessor: Forward into Calabar from the local library. We may choose to listen to the audiobook instead.
- Torch Light videos features Mary Slessor and it’s on Right Now Media! Woohoo! You can also buy the DVD or rent it from your library.
- David Livingstone
- Hero Tales has a chapter on his story with good reflection questions.
- I reserved David Livingstone: Africa’s Trailblazer from the library. We might choose to listen to this audiobook instead.
- Rowland Bingham
- I reserved Rowland Bingham: Into Africa’s Interior from the library.
- Samuel Morris
- Hero Tales has a chapter on his story with good reflection questions.
- Festo Kivengere
- Hero Tales II has a chapter on his story with good reflection questions.
- A Long Walk to Water – I’m going to have my 6th grader read this book on his own. I heard it’s very good and he is an avid reader, always needing a new book to read.
- Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption – We started reading this a few years ago, and I was amazed how the kids liked to hear it too. Not sure if I’ll just read it myself, or read aloud with them, but it would be a great way to hear about Africa and what is doing there now. It’s also an audiobook! Her other book, Daring to Hope, would also be a good one!
Family Movies
Last year we made a movie list for the entire 24 weeks of Classical Conversations Cycle 3, and it was a huge hit every Friday night for our Family Movie Night! Older movies are so much better than newer movies and we fell in love with them. I’ve been behind on that this year, but I’m excited to have movies related to Africa for the next 12 weeks of our semester!
- Born Free – Joy and her husband, a Kenya game warden, raise a lion cub. When the lion approaches maturity, Joy determines she must re-educate Elsa to living in the wild so that the lioness can return to a free life.
- Duma – Exciting story of a 12 year old who decides to return a cheetah he raised from a cub to the wild instead of allowing pursuers to place him in captivity.
- An Elephant’s Journey – While living in Africa, a teen boy teams up with a huge, friendly elephant to take down a gang of dangerous local poachers.
- Cheetah – I loved watching this movie as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since then. I am eager to see how I view it as an adult. A born free story set in Kenya about an orphaned cheetah cub that is adopted and raised by an American family.
- Queen of Katwe – Based on a true story of an Ugandan girl who discovers her true talent for chess. This might be best for kids 13 and older only, or pre-watch to see if its ok for your family.
- Napoleon and Samantha – Two kids and a friendly lion take a perilous cross-country journey.
- Mia and the White Lion – A young girl and her beautiful white lion set out on an epic adventure across the African savanna where the lion can live freely.
- Ernest Goes to Africa – Ernest has to go to Africa to get his girlfriend who has kidnapped because of a yo-yo with diamonds in it.
- The Lion King – A coming of age masterpiece by Disney.
- The Lion King 1 1/2 – Timon and Pumbaa reveal where they came from, how they meet and how they helped Simba save the Serengeti.
- The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride – Simba’s daughter seeks adventure away from her father’s gaze.
- Madagascar 1, 2 and 3 – Animals find themselves shipwrecked on the exotic island of Madagascar.
Date Night Movies
I got so into looking up good family movies, that I ended up tagging a few of these for my husband to watch if we can too. Not sure we’ll watch them all, but I figured it could be neat for us to focus our media time as well. 🙂 I haven’t checked them all out, so let me know if I need to be warned about something.
- Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom
- Mary and Martha
- The Good Lie
- Invictus
- Hotel Rwanda
- Uganda: Ready to Forgive
- Maria Prean
- Ethiopia Rising
- Ethiopia by Tuk Tuk – I’m wondering if this could be one we watch as a family? It sounds interesting!
- Machine Gun Preacher
- Half of a Yellow Sun
- Mully
- Mirage of Hope
YouTube Playlist
While I was at it, I also created a playlist of unique things I found about Africa on YouTube. Mostly missionary stories, kids lives, food, culture, etc. I didn’t check these all out closely, so be cautious if you refer to them. I just wanted to have some ideas in a list that I could have easy access to if needed. Here’s my Africa YouTube playlist.
Afternoon Crafts & Activities
I often give my kids free time in the afternoon, but sometimes I like to have an activity or craft planned for them. It doesn’t always happen, but I try. Here are some ideas I am planning to pull from when I have the capacity and time.
- African masks. I want to do a little lesson on African masks, what they are, why they were used, what they look like etc. I found some websites to give me some ideas. Then, we had some extra face masks from our King Tut mask project in the fall, and I’d like them to paint their own African face mask – maybe even telling a story, like some do! Here are the face masks I bought on Amazon that worked perfectly and are super affordable! You could also use a plastic milk jug.
- African Puzzle. Someone gave us this and I think it would be cool to put together!
- Soap carving. I had this idea a few years ago and saved bars of soap that the kids could carve African figures into soap. You can usually get several bars of soap at the Dollar Tree for $1.
- Hieroglyphics. The kids can write secret notes to each other or penpals with a hieroglyphics code like this.
- Egyptian Collars. Make these beautiful collars with paper plates.
- African songs. Learn some African songs, the history of them, or just watch some YouTube videos listening to them sing and dance. Maybe have them learn to play one on the piano, guitar or tin whistle?
- African food. Make some fun African food or visit a local restaurant that serves African food.
