We officially wrote our “exit date” on our passports for South Africa, concluding our 2 week tour, and began our new study of Nigeria this week.
Day 1, we reviewed our continents/oceans song and our Southern Africa song before beginning our new song on the countries of West Africa.
“Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia,
Guinea-Bassau, Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia,
Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso. Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria,
and the islands of Cape Verde.
Hundreds of different ethnic groups are living in West Africa.”
(from Geography Songs)
Next, we officially stamped our passports with the flag sticker of Nigeria.
On Day 2, we had a blast learning to use our atlas and discovering the new geography terms for Nigeria. Our Essential Atlas of the World has a topographical map and key that we learned to use, and then we turned to our book Geography A to Z to find the definition for the topography terms that were used in our atlas. “Savannah,” “plateau,” “gulf,” and “cape” were the terms for this week (cape and plateau are review). I was thrilled to see my books working so well together.
(Sometimes, it’s a little scary to piece together your own curriculum because you don’t know how well everything will fit together. I feel greatly relieved!)
After reading our terms, I took the kids back to the atlas and had them find all of the capes along the coastline of western Africa. It was thrilling to see that even the little one was very quick to find them all, including ones that her brother didn’t find. Both of them had a lot of fun, and it was a terrific lesson in maps and atlases.
Next up, some notebooking pages on the country and the flag of Nigeria, as well as some fun fables from the land.
It sounds like you are having a lot of fun with this unit! Thanks for sharing it!