All last year we studied all the different biomes like the grasslands, rainforests, and deserts, just to name a few. I thought this year it would be fun to explore biomes again, but in the context of world geography.

For geography, we decided to use Beautiful Feet Book's Around the World (ATW) as our guide. We didn't use the curriculum as intended, but more of a guide on which books to use and animals to cover for each specific country. I added in my own additional books, crafts, hands on resources, and Youtube videos to make our lessons come to life and more interactive.

We just finished our first continent and I figured I'd write this blog post while it's still fresh in my mind. So, first up is Africa!

Weeks 1 & 2: The Sahara Desert and Morocco 

The main book that we used throughout our geography studies to look up all the different countries was Maps  by Aleksandra Mizelinska. It's very user friendly, contains beautiful illustrations, is full of useful pictorial information, and is fun to look at and use. 

 We focused on the Sahara, Kalahari, and Namib deserts of Africa. We used our Jack and Link dry erase map of Africa found HERE, our Jack and Link dry erase biome map of Africa found HERE, Montessori puzzle map of Africa found HERE, and an Africa and Middle East Geopuzzle found HERE.  We also used a world floor maps that my kids found entertaining and you can find it HERE. 

We also used several wall maps. The first map is a huge wall map that measures 33" tall by 47" wide and it beautifully illustrates anything you could possibly want to view such as all the cities, mountain ranges, rivers, and seas in all the different countries. You can find it HERE. 

As our main spine for learning about the Deserts, we used this Gail Gibbons book titled, "Deserts." You can click on the picture for a direct link. You literally cannot go wrong with Gail Gibbons: 

 We studied Elephants and used the Gail Gibbons and Lily Williams books to discuss all things Elephants and then to discuss what would happen if elephants disappeared? What effect would that have on that ecosystem? You can click on the pictures for direct links. 

  We read a lot of books during those two weeks to get a taste of the culture, explore the different countries, and to help us get a basic feel for Africa.

Interactive sticker book that my kids really enjoyed. 

We used this book to look up stories of children living in Africa.  

An African Little Red Riding Hood Tale 

We used the next two books as independent readers. The first was for my 7 year old and the second one was for my 9 year old. 

We loved this book! It was full of fun craft ideas. We did an ostrich egg activity and then as a follow up activity, we learned about the ostrich and did some fun notebooking (shown further down in this blog). 

Below is a fun pop up book that I've had since the boys were toddlers and the fact that we still get a ton of use says a lot. It's a fun pop up book, BUT has so much good information interwoven on each page.

This baby professor book is a great option for kids in Kindergarten and lower ages, but I still used it with my 7 year old as an independent reader and for him to pull information out of for his note booking. 

There's quite a few really great craft and hands on activities to do with your kids in this book. There was one activity that we didn't get a chance to do where you can graft two different cacti to create your own unique cactus. We decided to just buy our own cacti, but it's one I would've loved to have tried. We did create our own faux cactus using clay (you can use play dough) and we stuck toothpicks all throughout. We used a flashlight to mimic the sun to show how the needles protect the cactus from the sun's hot rays and how the spines cast shadows providing shade to desert insects and birds.

We loved using Draw Write Now animal book! So much so that I'm considering purchasing another one in the series. We used it a lot for fun notebooking.

This was a good overall book that showed each biome located on each continent. 

Another resource we loved incorporating were Animal Pennants and we purchased ours from Teachers Pay Teachers. We printed them out and used watercolors, crayons, and fun markers before filling them in with information. Then we hung them on our wall and they decorated our classroom for the entire time we studied Africa. We purchased ours HERE.

We also enjoyed watching YouTube videos and I will link some of our favorites. Even though I am linking the ones we watched and enjoyed, please screen these first to ensure that they fit with what you're looking for:

Week 3 & 4: The Congo Rainforest and Egypt

For BFB ATW we primarily used these books:

 I decided to save our deep dive into the rainforest for when we studied South America, so for Africa we decided to stick to a brief overview of the Congo rainforest and the animals native to Egypt, and specifically to the Congo rainforest. 

For this week we decided to focus on specific animals: crocodiles, sloths, chimpanzees and gorillas.

This book gives an excellent overview of all biomes according to each continent. I think this book works best for older kids around 3rd grade and above. 

My 7 year old appreciated this book more than first one because of it's beautiful illustrations, easier to read text, and interesting facts.

This picture book is so stunning! It's definitely a must buy in my book:

The first animal that we enjoyed learning about was the Nile Crocodile and we decided to learn about crocodiles and alligators. We used a book by the wonderful Gail Gibbons for this study and it was the perfect book. We also used a resource from Teachers Pay Teacher to help us compare and contrast the two different reptiles.  

We used THIS printable from Teacher's Pay Teachers for some added hands on work on comparing and contrasting alligators to crocodiles. 

We used the information from the printable to sort on chart paper key facts relevant to each reptile. We also watched YouTube videos (linked below) and paused the video whenever they encountered a fun fact they wanted to add to our chart paper. I had pre-printed and cut out multiple crocodile and alligator images so they could tape it our chart.

Then we used that information and did some note booking: 

We also used the black line masters from Beautiful Feet Book's Around the World to color in the flag and country outline. The book pictured below is the MAPS book mentioned above and the spelling bar is from Jack and Link found HERE. 

We also did a tiny bit of life cycle work and used our Jack and Link life cycle boardand the life cycle figurines found at Jack and Link as well. 

For studying all the other animals we used the below books which are all AMAZING! I highly recommend! Click on the picture for direct links. 

For a cute read aloud with younger kids, this book is adorable:

A great picture book that shows real, stunning, and beautiful photography from Africa is this book:  

To add to our notebooking, we also used this sticker book which, sadly, they don't make anymore. However,  if you click on the picture, I'll show you one that is even better: 

For games and activities, I pulled them primarily from these three books: 

We also read a couple of AESOP fables from Africa. We pulled the stories from these two books:

For Youtube videos we watched the following vides (please make sure you screen first):

About Egypt

Rainforest Biome

Another Rainforest Biome YouTube Video

Sloth Facts

SciShow Kids Sloth

We did a fun African jewelry craft that we pulled from the Hands on Africa book. We used fruit loops, dyed pasta, Cracking Oats, silicone and wooden beads, and dental floss for the sting but you can totally just use string. We used dental floss because it more closely resembled the materials used in Africa. 

The last thing we did before leaving the Congo rainforest was one final notebook entry. We watched a fun tutorial on YouTube HEREand HERE and drew a gorilla. We outlined it in black marker and then used watercolors to fill it in. We then read some books about the gorilla and they filled in some backs to their notebook page.

Week 5: The Savannah, Kenya, and Tanzania

This week we started the Savannah! We used some of the resources I shared in the beginning of this blog post (Habitats of the World, Planet Earth, and The Animal Atlas) to learn about the Savannah, but we also read this book:

Then the kids decided they wanted to watercolor the landscape of the Savannah into our notebooks and I loved that idea. We decided to just watercolor the landscape and as we learned about the various animals that roam the Savannah, we'd add them to our notebooks with captions. We added Acacia trees, African elephants, giraffes, and lions to our landscape. This happened throughout the course of 2 weeks and we'd slowly add to our landscape. 

We watched this video about African elephants that you can find HERE and we used the Hands on Africa book to create slotted elephants. There were several templates included in the back of the book so I just photo copied it and printed it out on card stock. I tend to always use THIS brand. It prints easily and isn't too thick that it gets stuck in the printer.

We also read about Elephants using THIS book and it had a great 2 page spread about elephants that I haven't found mentioned anywhere else:

 We played a fun game native to Kenyans from the Play! book. It's basically just like the childhood Jacks game with several scattered pieces on the floor and a rubber ball (except in Kenya they use chicken bones). The point of the game is to try to grab as many pieces as you can every time you bounce the ball before it hits the ground. We had SO much FUN!

We read about Nelson Mandela and I used THISbook as a read aloud and the two other books as independent reading.  I set the timer for 15 minutes and they read their assigned books:

The Big Dreamsbook is perfect for my second grader and the Step into Readingone was a perfect easy read for my fourth grader:

If you'd like one with a bit more meat and detail for slightly older kids, then check this one out, "The Story of Nelson Mandela."

Then we did some notebooking. I printed out a free coloring page and stuck it onto the notebook which they colored and then they wrote down one of their favorite quotes from Mandela with 1-2 sentences:

We also read these three books. My favorite were the "Chirchir is Singing" and "Wangari's Tree of Peace" books. 

"For You Are a Kenyan Child," was another adorable book. I definitely recommend!

We talked and read a lot about the different animals living in the Savannah which was a lot of fun! All the interesting animals are found there like the Cheetah, Hippo, Giraffes, Elephants, etc. We primarily would our Savannah Food Chain book:

This was another great one for easy visuals is Animal Habitats:

The final thing we did was some fun three part cards on each African biome, the animals, the native tribes, food, culture, and transportation:

The boys each picked their favorite animal and they decided to include them in our notebooks:

Final Week

This was our final week studying Africa. We did a lot of floor map work exploring Africa, reading any left over books that we hadn't read, and we visited our local Safari zoo and went on a Safari ride.

We read these two books which I highly recommend because they were so fun!

And finally, we couldn't leave Africa without learning about Jane Goodall. We watched some Youtube videos, read these two books below, and did some notebooking:

So there you have it! We're moving on to Asia now and I will include a separate blog post highlighting books, resources, and activities once we finish it. It will be a bit more organized now that I have a better understanding on how I want to mesh Beautiful Feet Book's Around the World with my own biome study. I want to include more crafts, different educational targets, and more people which should be fairly easy because Asia has sooooo many wonderful people to learn about.

If you come across any typos, please let me know! I'd be happy to fix them.

If you'd like to see all the books used in one area, I created an Amazon list where you can find them all there: link to Amazon List (aff.)