Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Geography/Ecology class

So I'm putting together a class for the elementary school kids, mostly the older ones, 4-5th graders which is going to be geography/ecology. Most of the people in my village have never seen a map of the world. Most believe there is one country, where all white people come from not distinguishing between America and Europe, or realizing that there are blacks or asians or any other ethnicity that live there as well. And this Europe/America/Land of the Whites might be as far or as a close as Yaounde, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia. For those who rarely leave the little village of Mafa Kilda, any place "out there" is far. So I'm going to go continent by continent, one continent at a time and talk about the weather there, the people, animals, etc. and where it's located. I am in the middle of drawing a huge map of the world on the classroom wall which we will paint in as we go continent to continent. In addition to the geography, I'm hoping to highlight on ecological lesson in each continent, for instance, comparing cows in Scotland with those here, why might the ones in Scotland have lots of hair, and the ones here have a hump? And so on. Or camoflauge with Polar bears in the Arctic. However, at the moment I am searching for nice photos (i.e. national geographics, magazines) that might show things like: cold places, deserts, snow, panda bears, polar bears, grizzly bears, birds from all over, Highland cows, Tigers, Galapogas turtles, people/clothing from all different countries, homes, landscapes. So I'm requesting your help! If any of you have any old national geographics or other old magazines that might be able to furnish some nice photos, would you be willing to cut them out and send them my way? Even if I get them in 3 months time it will help as I plan on doing the course next semester as well, and next year. And with the lack of resources here (textbooks, photos, everything) I'm sure they would be much appreciated by my following volunteer as well!

2 comments:

kathryn said...

what a great idea, elizabeth! i talked to people in madagascar all the time who had similar misconceptions about "andafy," the malagasy word for "anywhere but here," basically. if i were still there i would totally steal this idea. i bet the kids will love to learn about all those places they don't know about. i'll keep an eye out for some pictures to send you!

Jeff Balnave said...

I'm a little late, but I can and will help with this! I'll let you know when the pictures are in the mail.

Thank you for your continued updates, I always look forward to reading them.

Happy Holidays!

- Jeff