Friday, September 20, 2013

Disney World Curriculum - Day 5 - Africa and Additional Ideas

Today was our last day of the Disney World curriculum.  We focused on the one remaining (and, my personal favorite) country in World Showcase: Morocco.  Since Morocco is in Africa, we thought it would be a great time to learn about some of the animals at Animal Kingdom. 

Africa

  • National Geographic DVD: Swinging Safari 
  • National Geographic Little Kids book: African Animal Alphabet by: Beverly and Dereck Joubert
  • Water for One, Water for Everyone by: Stephen R. Swinburne
  • We All Went on Safari by: Laurie Krebs

Morocco

  • The Children of Morocco by: Jules Hermes
  • The Storytellers by: Ted Lewin
  • Mirror by: Jeannie Baker (this one was really neat - it compares the lives of a family in Australia to a family in Morocco)
  • We also watched Aladdin - partly because it was helpful so that I could get some work done
  • We tried mint tea - you would've thought that I tried to poison X-Man (and I wish I would've had the event recorded!)
We did a few other things today too - I looked up some info on the architecture and landmarks at World Showcase.  I look forward to being able to share information on the martyrdom of St. George in Germany, and the church in Norway, I think they'll enjoy trying to figure out which totem pole is the real one in Canada, and seeing the Terracotta Army in China.  I think our preparation is going to make Epcot much more enjoyable for them this time around.

We've also been listening to Disney music as we rented a few CDs from our library.

Additional Ideas

We decided to skim a lot of information this week.  I think when they're older, I'd love to go back to Disney after a more intensive curriculum.  Here's some additional ideas that we just didn't get time to do:

  • practicing with money
  • time (keeping track for shows, etc)
  • reading the non-Disney versions of fairy tales and comparing them to Disney versions
  • write a new ending to a fairy tale
  • write a new fairy tale
  • write a dialogue between two characters from two different stories
  • practicing reading maps
  • looking for spiritual applications in movies/stories
  • creating packing lists
  • creating foods from various countries
  • physics and magnetism - how rides work
We have packing lists ready and our house sitter in place.  We're getting pretty excited and can hardly wait to get there!  In the next few weeks, I hope to add additional information and tell you all about our trip.

Thanks for reading -  "See ya real soon!"

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