Around the World Unit Study: East (Part 2) and Central Africa Books

Friends, I’ve gone bananas buying books. While I’m excited to be adding 20 books about Africa to our collection (we’ve also read stacks and stacks of library books), I’ve realized we’ll never make it around the world by the end of the school year at this pace. Once we wrap up Africa, we’ll probably have to limit our studies to about 10 pieces of literature (plus library reference-type books) per continent.
 
Something I neglected to mention in my first post about our Around the World unit study is that we’ll try to “visit” countries that have significance to our family along the way. Since we have family from Ethiopia, we made sure to stop there on our journey.
 
East (Part II) & Central Africa

• The Great Migration (Tanzania and Kenya) by Lock
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Malawi) by Kamkwamba and Mealer
• Trouble (Ethiopia and Eritrea) by Kurtz
• Kaldi and the Dancing Goats: The Legend of Ethiopian Coffee (Ethiopia) by Mdahoma (This book is one version of the legend. Our copy didn’t arrive in time, so we just read the legend online.)
• Ethiopia: Enchantment of the World (Ethiopia) by Heinrichs
• The Best Beekeeper of Lalibela: A Tale from Africa (Ethiopia) by Kessler (We didn’t actually read this one yet. I could only find it used for at least $30 and decided to buy it when I find it for a better price or during a less intense book-buying month.)
• Gorillas (East, Central and West Africa) by Gail Gibbons
• Gorillas (East, Central and West Africa) by Simon
• Chimpanzees are Smart! by Rockwood
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In my first post, I split up our summary of activities by subject, but that didn’t really make sense since unit studies are interdisciplinary by nature. So from here on out, I’ll combine our geography/sciences, language, art and culture projects into one summary.

I realized after ordering all our books that I failed to find literature from Central Africa. Instead we briefly studied its rainforests and read several books about gorillas and chimpanzees.

Activities
Identified countries of study on map. Drew maps of the Serengeti’s great migration. Painted Lake Tanganyika. Inspired by “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” made models of inventions that could help people: rafts for people living in flood-prone areas. Discussed tropical rainforests (we’ll study them more thoroughly when we get to Central and South America). Wrote brief animal reports about gorillas. Illustrated reports with watercolor paintings of gorillas. Wrote fictional stories set in Ethiopia. Made Ethiopian honey bread (and enjoyed it over tea/coffee). Took field trip to the zoo to visit animals of Africa.

Learn about my intro photography curriculum
Documenting Your World Through Photography: An Introductory Course for Elementary and Middle Schoolers
 
More Around the World Book Lists
East Africa (Part I)
East Africa (Part II) and Central Africa
North Africa (Egypt)
Southern Africa
West Africa
The Arctic
​Antarctica

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