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!"