Expedition Earth: Nigeria

Nde-ewo! Welcome to our Expedition Earth Nigeria Lessons! This week was more fun than I’d originally anticipated all thanks to one of my dear friends who has great ideas and isn’t afraid to sacrifice her home in the name of science!

So we started our week as we typically do finding Nigeria on the map, and reviewing all of the other countries we’ve learned so far. We’ve got 26 countries under our belts thus far, and I’m pleased to say that everyone, including my preschooler knows where they all are on the map, the capitals, and how to say “hello” in the native language!

Here are Some Things we Studied:

• Where Nigeria is on the world map & located Abuja and the Gulf of Guinea
• Learned about the Nigerian flag and completed our coloring page
• How to say “Hello” in Igbo (they also speak English)
• Prayed for the people of Nigeria and the Riffi Berbers
• Learned about children of Nigeria
• Read Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography
• Completed a Nigeria lap book activity
• Completed and classified animals of Nigeria
• Learn more about Nigeria from National Geographic Kids
• Learned major landmarks and other fun facts about Nigeria
• Made a Nigerian Drum Craft
• Read Lake of the Big Snake by Isaac Olaleye
• Made West African Benne Cakes
• Made quicksand. At my friend Debbie’s house. Not mine. I’m not crazy.
• Made Banana Fritters, these were interesting. And fried. And powder sugared. And fried.

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

We start each week off by stamping our passports, saying hello in our new language, singing a little diddi and then trying to settle back down to actually learn something.

I always start off with the mapping activity, my son likes to ‘get the writing part out of the way’. For Nigeria we noted the capital city of Abuja, and the Gulf of Guinea.

Here’s my white board with all the fun info on it. I find having this up for the week helps my kids remember the information and makes review a lot easier…for me. I think I have short term memory loss after bearing 4 children, they just suck the brain cells right out of you don’t you think? But I digress…

We did our favorite activity each week which is learning about the animals of the country. Below they’re discussing who get’s to put up which animal on the wall. Since I have 3 kids doing this, they each get 2 animals. We have to divvy them up each week to avoid fighting for something really cool, like say the Red Bellied Monkey.

Next we made some fried Banana Fritters. They’re fried little banana cake things. Did I mention they are fried? For the sake of my arteries I try not to fry things, but I think it’s impossible to have a non-fried fritter.

We made a Nigerian Drum Craft that was fairly easy. We used flowerpots, paper bag and some pink duct tape along with a bunch of fancy embellishments. Unfortunately they didn’t last long, ripped fairly easy, but they had fun playing with them until then!

Of course we had to complete our mini lapbooks so we can create a Global Lap Book at the end of our journey.

And here it is….what you’ve all been waiting for…the quicksand. I’ll share the full story of this because it was seriously so cool!  But just know that there were 5 little boys all around the age of 6, each one got their own box of cornstarch, a bowl, and some water. You do the math…

After reading Lake of the Big Snake, and destroying my friend’s house (did I mention we didn’t do this at my house), they got hosed off and had some yummy West African Benne Cakes!

And that my friends, wraps up our week on Nigeria! Stay tuned as we head over to Egypt next week! Oooh, mummies! ;o)

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