Preschool African Studies: Egypt

Today we began a journey along with and inspired by Joyice of Raising Boys Homeschool and many other homeschool families.  This journey is a geographical study of the continent of Africa. In the following weeks I will share what we are learning, and if you feel inclined, join us in our study! 

Today we focused on Egypt. We read a neat alphabet book called Egypt ABC's that gave an overview of some popular Egyprian cultural icons and geography. We also read a chapter of African Princesses by Joyce Hansen. This chapter focused on Hatshepsut a powerful woman who was one of Egypts pharaohs. Also on our reading list was one page from Africa Is Not A Country, a children's book that profiles a slice of life for children across the continent of Africa.   Lastly, we read The Day of Ahmed's Secret. This story follows a young boy as he goes about his day keeping a secret he shares with his family at the end if the day. There is a part of the story where Ahmed observes a girl using a pulley to obtain something from a balcony. I asked my daughter if she knew what a pulley was, and she replied yes.  She said Sid The Science Kid used a pulley in one episode. PBS Kids for the win!

In addition to reading, I put together a little cut and paste handout that will be repeated for each nation. The handout requires the student to cut out the flag, capital city and a weather icon and paste it to the page. After pasting the capital city to the page, my daughter used the city to search for the weather using a weather app.

Then she choose the weather icon that matched the current weather and pasted it to the page. We then discussed why it was currently night time in Cairo and this continued into a science conversation about how the earth rotates as it circles the sun.  Finally we reviewed cardinal directions and she had to circle the region of Africa in which Egypt is located, then color in Egypt on the map on the bottom of the page.

For extra credit I offered an Egytian proven to trace to practice writing skills.  Day one of our African studies are under wrap :)