Lesson #1!

Friday was our first Ethiopia 101 class session and we learned about Ethiopia's geography, climate, and wildlife. We sat down with snacks about 10 a.m. and the kids listened as I read from Cultures of the World, Ethiopia by Steven Gish - a children's encyclopedia-like book which focuses on many aspects of life in Ethiopia. It's a great book that we picked up at our local library - out of about 5 similar books, this one is by far the most recent (newly updated in 2007) and provides great info in a very user-friendly fashion (it's easy to paraphrase for younger kids.)

One of my main goals of this lesson was to teach the kids to identify North America and Africa on the world map and show where we're at in relation to each other. From there we focused on Ethiopia and it's special features. I drew a map of Ethiopia and its surrounding countries on a big white poster board (I copied the map from a couple I found online.) Then the kids painted the map with tempera paints - they loved this part...the messier the better in their opinion! We labeled some of the more distinguishing features of the country such as mountains, desserts, valleys, the Blue Nile, and the capital Addis Ababa. I found some spongy letter stencils at Walmart and we used those to write "Ethiopia" at the bottom of our map. I found some great pictures and descriptions of endemic animals such as the Ethiopian Wolf and Gelada Baboon and common crops such as coffee and teff (the grain used to make the flat pancake-like stuff called injera) online that we printed, cut out, and glued to our map as well. And I found some weather clip art that the kids cut and glued on the map to show where it's more hot and dry and where it's more cool and rainy.

We went over a lot, and we could probably spend one class on each landmark and animal alone, but some cool things we learned that stood out to us:
1) Ethiopia is very mountainous and is sometimes called "The Roof of Africa" because it boasts some of the highest elevations on the continent. (And these mountains, such as the Choke and Mendebo, have also been referred to as the "African Alps.")
2) Along with its mountains, Ethiopia also has one of the world's lowest points - the Denakil Depression - and the Great Rift Valley which runs through the center of the country.
3) I always pictured all of Ethiopia being hot and dry (because of the recurring droughts and famines), but we learned it has many different climates ranging from cool, temperate, to hot, depending on the elevation. (Also the lowlands receive much less rain than the highlands.)
4) Ethiopians were the first people to cultivate coffee to be used as a beverage - and it's the country's main export. (So buy some at www.gobena.org to help the farmers AND orphans!)

I seriously found such an over-abundance of information - here are a couple lists of sites I found especially helpful and are worth checking out:

Great sites for coloring pages and drawings of african/ethiopian wildlife and agriculture:

http://www.ethiopiafirst.com/Tour/endemic/Endemic-mammals.html
http://www.janbrett.com/activities_pages_artwork.htm
http://www.rainbowkids.com/HTMLFiles.aspx?page=KidsActivities
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/africa/explore/ethiopia/ethiopia_overview.html
(I also found the clips about common crops on this site - it's a really great site to explore.)

And sites for free, printable maps:

http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/africa.html
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/geography.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/
http://www.beyondbooks.com/bbshared/maps/africa/index.htm
http://www.edupics.com/
(This edupics site also has the weather clip-art I mentioned.)
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ethiopia.html
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/et.htm

Thanks again to all of you who have given me great ideas and resources to check out! I'm still looking constantly, and will have lots more to share as we keep learning! Here's the finished product... (In the morning I ran to Walmart to get all of our supplies and found flag T-shirts for $2.50 - a fun prize for the map-makers. They thought they were cool - but Ellie wasn't too thrilled about the picture idea :)