Sahara Desert

We learned about the Sahara desert this week.  We started off by exploring our world map and identifying all the continents, then I showed them where Africa was and told them we would be learning about a desert there called the Sahara.

We read the story from our day bag and the girls insisted on making their own boat when it talked about the men taking a boat to Africa.  They walked and ran around as the story indicated, acting out the journey of the main characters.  They did this unprompted by me, which was fun to see.  It was a good reminder to me not be overly structured and allow them to move around during lessons to see what they come up with on their own.  More often that not, they are actually listening to me and are inspired in their next activities, not simply getting bored and wandering off.

I hung the theme poster on the wall in the kitchen so they could see it as we made our canteens, then they took off to pretend they were trekking across the desert for a while.

I brought them back to the table after a little while to play a game I modified from the teacher guide.  In the guide, it recommended having them blow sand off the first letter of their name but since they are a little more advanced than that, I used all the letters they had in common in their names and they pretended to be sandstorms, blowing salt off the letters and identifying them.  It helped that during breakfast I let my girls watch an episode of Diego where he is in the desert in Egypt; it introduced the concept of sandstorms, needing water and ways to protect themselves in the desert, such as wearing long clothes that cover their skin.

The older girls ended the school day playing the oasis game and practicing basics addition and subtraction.  Littlest had decided to leave the group at this point to have some alone time in the play kitchen before snack.  During snack, I found a YouTube video of animals that live in the desert, which they seemed to enjoy and was a good way to close our activities.  I know some parents have some really strong opinions about screen time but I have found that in controlled situations, it is a real benefit in our family.


Our next class is going to be on the Great Pyramid, which sounds like a lot of fun to me.