Haai! And welcome to South Africa! We’re having so much fun with our Geography Curriculum this year. I’ve been excited about Africa and it’s finally here!

Here are some of the fun activities we did for the week:

We started off filling in our passport and putting on our flag sticker for South Africa:

IMG_1494

Some Things We Learned:

  • Where S. Africa is on the world map & located Cape Town

  • Learned a song in Afrikaans

  • How to say “Hello” in Afrikaans

  • Prayed for the people of South Africa, and Xhosa

  • Learned about children in Botswana (I know, not part of S. Africa, but its close by and it was in our book)

  • Read Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography

  • Completed a South Africa lapbook activity

  • Learned about the Baobab Tree (a.k.a. The Upside Down Tree)

  • Completed and classified animals of South Africa

  • Learned new Geography Vocabulary

  • Made an Apple and Cheese Crumble dessert

  • Learned more about South Africa from National Geographic Kids

  • Learned major landmarks and other fun facts about South Africa

And here are what I managed to take pictures of ;o)

Of course we always start off by reviewing all countries learned so far, then finding our newest one:

IMG_1493

Here’s my white board for the day. Although S. Africa has 3 capitals we really only memorized Cape Town.

IMG_1495

We worked on our Flag and Mapping Worksheets. I doubled up on these this week due to other commitments, but it went fairly well.

IMG_1497

Of course we did our favorite activity, the animals of each country.

IMG_1523

And here were our favorite animals, it’s hard to tell from the photo, but I think we liked the Meerkat and Rhinoceros.

IMG_1529

We made S. Africa mini-books for our World Lapbook:

IMG_1538

And we made Apple Crumble. This would’ve been really good had we skipped the cheddar cheese! We ended up scraping it off the top and eating the insides! I’ll share the recipe later on.

IMG_1550

Well that wraps up our week on South Africa! Stay tuned as we head over to Kenya next week!

Click here to learn more about my Expedition Earth World Geography curriculum!

13 Comments

  1. Sounds like you guys had lots of fun – but I must say (as a South African) I have *never* heard of apple crumble with cheese (yuck). Now a really traditional recipe would be Koeksisters. Really labour intensive but SO worth it, They're yummy!! (you can find loads of recipes on Google).

  2. Hi Erica,I live in Cape Town, and 2 things jumped out at me when I read your post on your South African "expedition"- firstly, Botswana is not part of South Africa, and secondly, cheese is not used in Apple Crumble. Otherwise, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed learning about our beautiful country :-)Lianne

    Lianne
  3. I also wanted to add my "yuck" to your cheese on the apple crumble! It is not a South African dish we've ever heard of … maybe you should try a Malva pudding. A very popular dish is pap and wors, a mealie meal porridge similar to polenta with cooked sausage. I'm so glad you all enjoyed your journey to South Africa.

  4. Hey Erica,Just wanted to let you know cheese, or no cheese, you keep me inspired and on my toes! It's so easy to get run down and bored with the same old things, so thank you so much!!~Kelly

  5. Hi everyone! So as far as the cheese crumble thing not being from S. Africa, I guess I'll have to email the Trip Around the World folks since they had it in their book! LOL!Also, I know Botswana isn't in S. Africa, but if the book we're going through doesn't have the specific country we are in, we grab one close by, Botswana is directly north, so we chose that one. We also pray for S. Africa too, its just nice to have something to read with it.

  6. Funny about the cheese and apple :). I am an American living in Cape Town, and it's cool seeing your ideas about teaching your kids about this country. Our little one is too young now, but when she is older I will definitely cover SA more extensively in her geography studies since she spent her first couple years here. I love your site and am gathering tons of great ideas to implement with my LO when she's older.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.