'exploring Kenya' Planning

[Guest]

Happy New Year everyone!!!

my school has been very lucky and we have been linked to a school in Kenya for the Olympic period. I have spent time with my Foundation class talking about Kenya and showing them photos and artefacts from the school. However in the summer I am doing a half term topic on 'exploring Kenya.' I have thought and considered all the obvious things such as animal prints, models, handas surprise etc but was just wondering if anyone had any ideas they could share? or any music, stories etc!!

 

anything would be gratefully appreciated

thank you

[Fredbear]

I was very priviliged to visit Kenya back in 2007 with my hubby for our 25th anniversary, wow what a fantastic wonderful country to explore, the people the friendliest i have ever had the pleasure to meet.

Foods, many of our fruits and vegetables are grown in Kenya, can you search for easy to do recipes to cook.

The Masai Mara warriors, can the children dance to masai music.

Can you make some instruments to sing and dance with.

Can you explore water to help children understand what a precious resource it is in Africa.

I do hope you have a great time twining with a school there too.

I do know of some stories will try to search for them.

Edited January 3, 2012 by bridger

[Fredbear]

Mama Panyas pancakes and Bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain are two stories from Kenya available on Amazon.

Hope this helps.

[Guest]

I know there is a famous story called 'Anansi the spider'...not to sure what part of Africa it is from though??

 

My parents visited Kenya a few years back and said the schools are very short of pens/pencils etc...could you ask the children to collect items to send packages? Just a thought

[Guest]

When our whole school did a topic week on Africa we did the story-Greedy Zebra-basically a tradtional tale about how the zebra got his stripes. Lots of music and movement work, animal patterns, craft work, we used the painting Tiger in the Storm for PSHE and literacy.

[Guest]

When our whole school did a topic week on Africa we did the story-Greedy Zebra-basically a tradtional tale about how the zebra got his stripes. Lots of music and movement work, animal patterns, craft work, we used the painting Tiger in the Storm for PSHE and literacy.

 

 

I love that story. My class last year loved it too, though when it came to writing animal fact files they nearly all wrote that zebras were greedy and I'm not sure that's true! When we explored Africa last year we were lucky enough to have some African instruments loaned to us by someone who had lived there. I know there are lots of African drumming groups who will do performances/workshops for young children, but I'm not sure how much they cost. Usually well worth it though from the ones I've seen.

 

On another note am I the only one though who finds the painting Tiger in the Storm freaky? I just can't look at it; the tiger's face disturbs me. Everyone always raves over it and I feel like I'm completely nuts, but I just can't stand it!

[Guest]

I did a half term based upon Handa's surprise and did it as a story telling text which the children learnt by heart and then made up their own stories based on it we looked also at Mama Panya's pancakes which I love-all 3 stories I used as a starting point for numeracy as well as literacy. We had an artefact box from our local museum with african instruments and we used them as a starting point for designing our own which we then used in a music sesssion at the end. We did dance based upon the animals in the story of Handa's surprise and our KUW was all about African animals. One of the art things we did which was very easy and striking was a sunset picture-the children used inks to create a sunset and then they drew round animal templates in black paper and cut them out and stuck them on they looked fab and were simple enough that they could attempt them unaided. We also learned the song kye kye Kule (pronounced Jai jai coolay) and used their instruments to beat to the rhythm see the sing up website

http://www.singup.org/songbank/song-bank/s...6-kye-kye-kule/

 

hope that helps!

Deb