Africa!

WE do a different kind of workboxing for geography.  I use a combonation of Montessori, Charlotte Mason  in my teaching and we have continent boxes.  These were made by a cousin who LOVES to do plastic canvas work!  We then scotchguard them and stuff each continent box with things about that continent. She and I sat down one day and designed these so that they would accomodate something as big as a 9X12 folder.  Here is a sample list of stuff that may be in one of the boxes:

Folder with coloring sheets, puzzles, crosswords, booklets etc...
Toobs animals from all the different continents (Available at amazon)
Stickers with animals,  or flags of that country
Recipes
Craft sheets for that continent
material with print from that continent
Chinese take out boxes that are fabric colored (Target $1 bins)
box of cards with famous landmarks from each continent (Also Target $1 bins!)
workbooks
maps
travel brochures (Local travel agency)
books
Cards with websites about that continent
items that people have brought us from their travels
postcards

The list could go on forever!  The kids really enjoy exploring their boxes and it makes it easy to locate everything!

These are the tops to the boxes.  She was very detailed in the maps!  Oh how I wish Montessori materials makers would come up with a wooden box with lids that have continent puzzles on the top!  How awesome would that be?!!!!

We study 1 continent a year!  LAst year, we did North America. This year, it's Africa!  Last week we decided to have an african meal and dress the part, after seeing an African family on vacation a couple of weeks ago! Here they are preparing the meal! We had blackeye pea balls, potatoes and Kale  and a chicken dish with a really long name!  We had baked bananas for dessert!   We got the recipes from a great book at the library called PASSPORT ON A PLATE~ Check it out sometime!