African Safari

The children are thoroughly enjoying our African themed topic this term.

We have focused mainly on the country of Kenya, comparing the busy city of Nairobi with a more remote area around a town called Machakos. We have made comparisons with our own locality, talking about physical and human features and finding out about transport and journeys. We have discovered that although things often look very different, we share many similarities with the people of Kenya.

For World Awareness week, we shifted our focus to Tanzania, using the text ‘We All Went on Safari’ by Laurie Krebs as a springboard for finding out about the wildlife, environment and Masai people of Tanzania. We even learnt to count to ten in Swahili!

Our African workshop was a wonderful opportunity for the children to experience a taste of African culture through storytelling, drama, music and dance. The children loved listening, retelling and acting out the Anansi stories and we all enjoyed dancing to the beat of the African drums. Needless to say the drumming sessions were loud, great fun and got us all moving! With the help of our guide, Kulchalee, we were able to explore and play different African rhythms using a variety of percussion instruments.