It's not like my kids don't know anything about the Sahara. Much of what we've read and watched has included it. But I did want one specific activity regarding it. And because it's good to mix things up, I created a crossword puzzle on the Sahara.
There are many puzzle generators on the internet; some are free, some are not, and some are more user friendly than others. I tend to use Puzzlemaker at Discovery Education most often for creating puzzles. I also tend to copy/paste what's on the screen to Microsoft Publisher so I can manipulate things better for printing, too.
For this particular puzzle, I had the kids read a Live Science article on the Saharafirst and then gave them the puzzle. All the answers were inside the article. It was quick and informative.
Jambo is "hello" in Swahili, an important language in Africa. Though the official language of only three African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) it is widely spoken throughout East Africa and elsewhere. Swahili is a lingua franca, or a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
We learned a little Swahili while learning about it. The following video was fun to watch, like a cultural exchange.
The highlight of our learning about Swahili was being introduced to "Baba Yetu," which is The Lord's Prayer in Swahili, put to music, written by Christopher Tin. It's hard to say which of the following two versions is our favorite.
(I loved one of the comments on the feed: "a song written by an asian guy sung in an african language about the lords prayer by a white guy in africa now thats how this world should be together fam")
I created twonotebooking pages to go with our lessons on Swahili. The first was to write a summary of the history of and facts about the language (top) and two write some basic English words and the Swahili translation (bottom) like numbers, greetings, family members, etc. The second notebooking page is for writing the words to "Baba Yetu." Over the top of the globe showing North America, the kids wrote The Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6:9-13 in English. Over the top of the globe showing Africa, the kids wrote the "Baba Yetu" lyrics.
Baba yetu, yetu uliye (Our, our Father who are) Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina (In heaven, our, our, amen) Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are) Jina lako litukuzwe (Let's glorify your name)
Utupe leo chakula chetu (Give us today our food) Tunachohitaji utusamehe (We need you to forgive us) Makosa yetu, hey (Our errors, hey) Kama nasi tunavyowasamehe (As we do forgive those) Waliotukosea, usitutie (Who did us wrong, don't put us) Katika majaribu, lakini (Into trials, but) Utuokoe, na yule, milele na milele (Save us, with him, for ever and ever)
Ufalme wako ufike utakalo (Your kingdom come that it be) Lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni, amina (done on earth as in heaven, amen)
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are) Jina lako litukuzwe (Let's glorify your name) Baba yetu, yetu, uliye (Our, our Father, who are) Jina lako litukuzwe (Let's glorify your name)
As a side, if you're thinking you've heard the song before, or you're wondering when and why it was written, it's kind of an interesting situation. Christopher Tin wrote "Baba Yetu" for the "Civilization" video game.
You may or may not want to tell your kids that. We had a discussion about what The Lord's Prayer, Swahili, and the history of the world's civilizations might have to do with each other but it led to my kids telling me that playing "Civilization" was perfectly acceptable "homework" the next day.
I'm not sure which is more exciting: a blank map waiting to be marked or a brilliant, colorful, already informative map. I love maps!
A great way to get geography down is to spend a lot of time with maps, especially making them. You don't have to do the same type of map over and over--there are lots of things to map! Every time my kids mapped something new, they had more countries and their locations memorized.
Here are some of the continental maps we did with Africa:
Political map - countries
Physical map
Map of major rivers
Natural resource map
Map of products/exports
Political map - capitol cities
Map of average temperatures
Map of official languages
Map of predominant religions
Map of LDS missions
Map of LDS temples
Latitude and longitude with worksheets
After marking some of these maps, it was good to put them side by side and analyze. For instance, looking at all the maps having to do with religion and churches, it's pretty obvious why the LDS church doesn't have anything going on in North Africa.
