Africa Unit Study Wrap Up

Living in Tanzania, it is only fair that my class has spent the last month doing a thorough study of the continent of Africa.  For our primary base, we used a Lapbook on Africa (http://www.handsofachild.com/africa-curriculum.html), which was a good point to start on a lot of things. Now naturally, being here, we have a lot of resources, and I finally got to use the things around us to have a great time studying Africa.

• African Peanut Stew

-the kitchen ladies taught us to make us a great peanut stew, similar to the one here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/african-peanut-soup/

• Bao (Mancala)

-Our very own Naomi taught us a classic Tanzanian schoolyard game (known as Mancala in a lot of places, but Bao here). My favorite moment of her teaching was when she nonchalantly grabbed a machete from the guard here and began hacking at the dirt to make the divets.   Rules for this version can be found here: http://www.mastersgames.com/rules/mancala-rules.htm

• Tinga Tinga Art

-This was probably our favorite part of the study, where we spent a whole morning painting our own Tinga Tinga paintings under Kimambo, a local artist. He drew the outlines of the animals, and then the students painted the details. For those who don’t have access to an excellent Tinga Tinga artist, there’s a cool video example of the style here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNsCE6VJPzA

• Lake Chala

-Since our science study was on the biome of the grasslands, we went to our local grasslands to sketch and take pictures.  It’s summer here, and it was a blisteringly hot day, but we swam down at the lake too, watching from the cool water as monkeys swung through the trees nearby.

• Weaving

-We got to do a couple field trips during this unit study, and one of them was visiting a lady who does weaving here locally. She was super friendly, and walked us through the whole process of weaving thread into a beautiful cloth. It takes hours to wind the bobbins, not to even mention the days it takes to make a bolt of cloth. She sells her work, but I’m not sure how she lives by selling each bolt of fabric (many days’ work) for 100,000 ($60). Her assistant let us try to get the rhythm of working the machine with all its pedals and handles – it was not easy!  His rhythm and speed were incredible on this homemade machine crafted all from wood and old bicycle parts.

• Geography Game

-My Father’s World curriculum comes with maps for a Geography Game, which aids in learning the names and locations of all the countries of the world. My students love this game, and are so competitive I have to tell them sometimes that if they don’t chill out about mistaking Namibia for Angola, we’ll have to stop playing. You would think they were winning a million shillings instead of a piece of gum, from the way they play. Essentially the game uses a map of a continent with numbered countries, and cards with country names. You draw a card and have to guess the number on the map.  If you guess correctly, you get to put a marker on that country.  If you don't, you lose your turn.  The first one to get to a certain number of markers wins.

Fun study! On to Saudi Arabia!

What a Difference a Few Months Makes!

On Friday, I took my class to Lake Chala for a field trip.  We have been doing our unit study on Africa, and in science we’ve been studying the grasslands biome. Lake Chala has beautiful grasslands, and we enjoyed our day there. The students sketched for a while, took pictures and finally we hiked down to the lake to swim. Even though this is the dry season, we’ve had some recent rains and the grasslands of Chala are bright and green! I love the summer look the area has right now, with sunflowers and every kind of plant blooming. When we camped here in September, the grasses were all shades of tan and brown. I found the dryness beautiful too – the way the afternoon sun made the colors all blend together, the distinct arid rustling sound when the breeze came through.  Fun to experience the small differences in seasons here – it’s not much, but I will take what I can get!

Crafts with 1st and 2nd Grade

In the afternoons on Thursdays I teach the 1^st and 2^nd grade class on the topic of Crafts/Cooking. You might already be chuckling picturing 6 and 7 year olds doing cooking and crafting, but it’s actually a lot of fun. They’re so enthusiastic about ANYTHING that we do. It could be lining up at the door and they’re just like, “YES!! Let’s do it!!!” Anyway, I’ve had a great time finding projects for the class, and linking them in to the topics they’re currently studying.  The class is reading Charlotte’s Web, and so last week we did a simple weaving project to make a spider web with plates.

But before we did that, we did an activity. Before the class, I set up a yarn web in the hallway outside their classroom. They didn’t see it as they came in from break, so after we talked about spiders and their features, I suggested we go see a spider I had seen in the bathroom across the hall. You should have seen their eyes as we walked into the hallway and were blocked by a giant, tricky web! One of the students even yelped in fear and attached herself to my leg. But when they realized they’d be allow to climb through it, they were ecstatic.  They had fun pretending to be bugs escaping from a large spider, and then we returned to our craft time.

Getting Creative with PE

Our school is brand new, and we're all just getting used to how to make it work here in Moshi. Resources are a little scarce, supplies are rationed -- you know it's true when we have a whole trash pile that we keep and scavenge through for art projects, and when I find myself saying, "Ugh I HATE Pinterest - I can't do any of these things for school!!"

Anyway, PE is one of those classes where we have limited supplies - we have a basketball hoop/ball, a soccer ball, and a 4-square ball.  Now that's way more than some schools around here, so we count our blessings, but after a while, the kids get a little tired of that routine. Thankfully, while we don't have many supplies, we have a very creative PE teacher and he has come up with some crazy fun things to do.

Old mattresses + slackline = improvised tightrope and balance lesson:

Mercy going for a walk on the slackline

The kids even convinced teacher Francis to give it a try!

The Tanzanian Coast

As part of volunteering to be a teacher here, Hope International School pays for a monthly outing/excursion. This has become one of the best parts of being here - getting to see parts of Tanzania and its culture. Tanzania has such diversity in its different parts - in one area it will be so flat, dry and dusty, and in another green lush mountains pop out of the landscape.  So the driving is always interesting, even a long road trip like the drive to Tanga. It took us about 7 hours to get from Moshi to Pangani (a village) in Tanga. 

On the drive

I love all the sights in the small villages - people sitting out on the porches with each other, just visiting and staying cool in the shade, women carrying all kinds of things on their heads, the kids weaving through the homes, racing metal rings by pushing them with sticks. People are friendly, they'll wave and smile, and the kids especially always stop and shout their greetings. It always makes me wish I had an unlimited supply of little candies to toss to the kids as we pass.  They're so sweet. 

Friendly kids as we pass

Anyone want to stay at this "hotel"? I'll pass...

After many stops with our caravan, including plenty of middle-of-nowhere-bathroom experiences (seriously, I am now such a pro at peeing behind a bush, do you think I can put that on my resume?), we arrived at Peponi Beach Resort, outside of Pangani. Quiet place, very simple, but a great spot to relax by the beach! They had both bandas (bamboo rooms with fans and nets) and campsites. Some of our group stayed in the bandas, and we stayed in tents in the campsites.  The campsites were a mere 5000 shillings a night ($3.50), crazy! There is a restaurant and pool on the grounds, and hammocks all over the place. The beach was 30 feet from our campsite, and the water was warm and clear. The beach at low tide was even better - the tide recedes so far that you can wade on the sand for about half a mile out. The creatures and shells we saw were so fun.  And the water was a relief, as it was the hottest and most humid it's been yet here in Tanzania. At night even, it was easily 90 degrees outside and so humid. 

On the beach at low tide, you could walk out to this swampy grove of trees that was so cool to see. There were small popping sounds as bubbles from underneath made their way to the surface and popped in the wet sand. The ocean breeze blew through the leaves and it was such a unique combination to see leafy green trees growing in the sand with little waves lapping at the bases. 

The odd grove of beach trees, loved them!

One of the days we were at Peponi, we paid 17,000 shillings ($12) to go out on the little sailboat for a snorkeling trip.  Now the last boat trip I did was last year in Australia, visiting the Great Barrier Reef. Well let's compare the two - GBR: $185, extensive safety talk and regulations, long explanations on how to use the mask/snorkel/fins, marine biologist on board to explain all the sea creatures and why we don't touch the coral, ratio of 1 staff member to every 5 passengers. Peponi boat - $12, leaky sail boat in which one sailor was regularly bailing water out of the bottom, 30 passengers to 2 sailors, no safety talk, no life vests, we got to the coral area and they just dropped the anchor and said "karibuni!" ("welcome!").  Ahh I was cracking up at the differences! Truly an African experience.  But I loved it - the sail boat was really cool, a patched sail and some careful steering led us to a white sandbar, with beautiful clear water. The sandbar island is under the water most of the day, but at low tide, it makes its appearance, covered in sea stars and shells. We had our lunch picnic there, and everyone walked the entirety of the place, seeing all there was to see.  After lunch, we stopped one other place to snorkel around some coral.  After my GBR experience where I was sunburned worse than I ever have, I put on a tshirt and leggings to snorkel here! Everyone laughed, but at least I didn't burn!

The dhow took us to this sandbar island for lunch

If you look carefully, you can see my skin burning! =) 

Pepi, the sailboat 

On the sandbar, a crazy looking starfish

Snorkeling time

The trip to the coast was over too fast, and we made the long trek back. School began the next day and we are now back to our regular full-time routine!  I don't miss the heat at that beach, but I do wish we could have lunch on that sandbar island again!

A Wintry Cruise

Last month, through a wonderful turn of events, I had the privilege of joining the Penner family on their Rhine River Cruise through Switzerland, Germany, France and the Netherlands. A Christmas-y break from Tanzania was just what I needed! I was able to get a week off school and gather some warm clothing here at the Memoria used clothes market in Moshi. It was such a fun trip to look forward to - on humid 90 degree days I would think "this time next month, I'll be in a cold Christmas market, wishing for something hot to drink!" Time moves slowly in Tanzania, it's a simpler lifestyle, so on some days the cruise seemed very far away.  I was so excited to see new places, new faces and just get away for a bit. So without further ado, here are some of my favorite shots and events from the trip!

I flew into Frankfurt, and we took the train to Mainz the next day to catch the Mainz-Stuttgart football match. Great fun, the fans alone were worth the price of the ticket, they were so enthusiastic.

Our home away from home for a week!

Gateway to the Black Forest - cute little town where we hiked through some vineyards. Note the cheese!! Much missed and ahh what a reunion we had, me and cheese. =)

Snowy hills, tiny villages celebrating their 1000th anniversary of existence, cuckoo clocks and Black Forest cake!

France! Loved the cathedral here, and all the history! Great Christmas market too, where I filmed a video for my class in Tanzania, who were studying France that week.  Emailed it over to them that night, gotta love first world technology (miss that too!).

Little university town that reminded me of Oxford, I liked all the little narrow cobblestone streets! Went to a grocery store here and was totally overwhelmed by all my choices! I could have spent way more time shopping than sightseeing, but I settled for buying spices and chocolate.

Early one morning, we sailed a long stretch of the Rhine, passing by probably 30 castles in just a few hours. The cold cloudy morning meant it was a chilly view from the top deck, but worth it for pictures! Every 30 minutes, I would go down to thaw out, I must have gone through 10 cups of tea! 

Beautiful Cologne, huge cathedral where we sat in a German midday mass, shivering in the church that I kid you not, was colder than outside. Best Christmas markets in the whole trip too - huge and such great selection of fun foods, crafts, music. To warm up, Anna and I visited the Lindt chocolate factory, which had over 100 types of truffles, including wasabi (?!).

Onto the Netherlands! Gouda cheese I missed you too! The windmills were a neat sight, and climbing the steep, narrow stairs up into the top of one was a challenge as the wind outside swayed the whole structure. 

Our final stop! I wish we had more time here, this city was so beautiful and fairly easy to navigate too. It was one of the only places we visited that didn't have major damage from WWII. Learned a lot walking through Anne Frank's house and hearing more of her story. Reluctantly took the train to the airport and started my long journey back to Moshi.

Unit Study on Brazil

My 5th and 6th grade class has been working through many countries of the world, and we recently finished learning about South America by studying Brazil! At Hope International School, we've been using My Father's World curriculum, which has some great guidelines for studying each country. In this two week study, we covered a lot.

• For science, we studied the Amazon rainforest, made a "Rainforest in a Bottle" with a layer of gravel/sand, damp soil and a plant.

• We watched a video of how chocolate is made, and learned that 70% of cocoa farmers and their families have never tasted the end product (a chocolate bar) of their labor!
• I created a Rainforest Treasure Hunt and used the clues to lead them to some prizes on our campus.
• For our read-aloud time we read The Fate of the Yellow Woodbee, the story of the five missionaries in Ecuador who were killed bringing the gospel to the Waorani people. During reading time, the kids did some detailed coloring sheets of rainforest animals (found here) and also made paper airplanes like those used by the missionaries.

• To help us learn the countries of South America, my class created a mnemonic.  To use this mnemonic, you start at Brazil and go counter-clockwise in a spiral: "Brian failed geography so Grandma very calmly, extra patiently, called a university professor, begging." (Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia)
• As part of their project for the unit, students had to plan a trip to Brazil, using travel websites. They had to research flights and hotels, plan a schedule of sights they wanted to see, and estimate the total cost of the trip in our currency and in the currency of Brazil. They loved this project.
• We went to a sugarcane plantation and factory! Despite being the most dangerous field trip of ALL time (this is Africa, remember!), they had a such a good time seeing all the fields, machines and packaging. They of course loved tasting the sugar at various stages.  However, all of them declared that they could never work there because of the heat, the noise, and the smell (it smelled strongly like molasses). =)

• Finally, for the end of our unit, we made Brigadeiros, a Brazilian chocolate treat. We ate them between matches of futbol. 

Overall, we had a great time in this unit!