African Classroom (Day 77)

Wow! Africa has been a homeschooling paradise. We spent 2 months here, visiting 4 very different countries: Rwanda, Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa. There was so much to learn about the natural world, traditional skills, and more. Every day brought a new experience and some very cool hands-on projects. Here is a small sample of what the kids learned over these last 8 weeks in Mrs. Butterball’s African classroom.

NATURAL WORLD

We learned A LOT about animals in Africa, especially in Kenya where our 3 safari stops each had different climates and local animals.

Did you know that vervet monkeys have different predator-specific alarm calls to warn the rest of their troop about different types of threats? That is pretty advanced communication for an animal!
Did you know that you can identify the gender of a giraffe by the way it poops? Female giraffes stop to poop, while males walk and poop.
Parasitic animals. The cuckoo bird tricks other birds into raising its babies! It flies down to another bird’s nest, pushes out an existing egg and leaves its own egg behind for the other bird mother to raise as her own.
Ruminants. We learned about animals that have 4 stomachs and how they digest their food differently – in a way that is gross and cool at the same time! Ruminants like giraffes and antelopes chew their food, swallow, regurgitate and then chew and swallow again. We watched giraffes actually do this. You could see the food going back up their long necks!
Animals who are active during the day (like elephants) are diurnal animals. Animals that are active at dawn and dusk (like jackals) are crepuscular animals. Animals that are active at night (like 60 species of lemurs) are nocturnal animals. Choosing to be active at night or dusk has been a successful evolutionary strategy because it helps animals hide from predators and decreases competition for food. Huey has long told us that he and his imaginary friend Mr. Broccoli are nocturnal. It turns out he may be right! His night skills were very strong in Madagascar, where we did a night walking safari to search for 4 inch mouse lemurs hiding 30 feet up in the trees. Hugh was incredibly talented at spotting them!

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TERMITES

Termites were a family favorite. They are fascinating insects!

The Queen has the longest lifespan of any insect, often living for 40 years.
Termites never sleep and work constantly.
Their mounds are actually climate controlled! Termites regulate temperature by opening and closing little chimneys that they build in the mound. Human architects have created naturally climate controlled buildings mimicking this termite process.
Termite mounds can be over 20 feet high and thousands of years old. Very big and very old if you are a little insect that only lives for 18 months on average.

Here is hazel with a termite mound in Kenya.

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OTHER INSECTS (AND MORE)

One day, we did a bug safari with real entomologists – scientists who study insects. We walked around and found lots insects and even scorpions and a real tarantula! Technically, spiders and scorpions are both arachnids, not insects. Who knew that scorpions and spiders were related?? That would be a fun family reunion!

Here is a tarantula we found just walking around.

We also learned to make specimens and look at insects under a microscope. A favorite was the cuckoo wasp. This iridescent wasp is even more sinister than the cuckoo bird…. The mother wasp lays her eggs in the nests of other wasps and bees. When the cuckoo wasp hatches, it eats the food reserved for the other babies, and then eats the babies too. The ultimate parasite! They are also exquisitely beautiful.

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PLANTS

Scientists have learned so much about plants from tribal people, who have known for centuries which have medicinal properties or other uses. The kids were excited to find a sort of natural Kenyan chewing gum on a tree right in front of us! We scraped off the resin, and they could pop it in their mouth and chew. Here, Hazel shows us how it works.

We also were able to plant hundreds of yellow fever trees in Kenya. There is a terrific new seed technology where the seed of the yellow fever tree (which for years was mistakenly believed to have caused malaria because of a powdery substance on its bark!) is wrapped in a germinating coat. The seeds can be thrown from a vehicle or dropped just about anywhere. They will germinate with the first rain fall. Cool, huh?!

We also did a plant safari, studying special South African plants call fynbos in a nature preserve on the coast. The fynbos biome covers less than 7% of South Africa, and this is the only place in the world that fynbos are found. But the fynbos biome is super diverse, with more plant species per square mile than even the Amazon! We learned so many cool things about local plants, like seemingly simple cone bush (leucadendron).

Did you know that some plants have genders? The cone bush needs a male plant and a female plant to reproduce. The technical term is that they are dioecious. It helps ensure genetic variation, and some plants you know of such as holly and asparagus are dioecious plants, too.
Did you know some plants need fire to reproduce? The cone bush seeds are contained within cone-like structures on the female for 4 years, and then they need to be baked. How does one bake a seed? Fire, of course! Fynbos needs fire to germinate. The entire ecosystem is designed around natural fires. Amazingly, the fires in the USA tend to involve trees with high resin content so they burn very hot, but the fynbos are more oil based, so they burn at a cooler temperature and move very quickly through the area. Fires open the seeds from cones and lower competition from other plants.

Here are a female cone bush and a male cone bush.

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THE MOON

We have had many dinners outside in rural Africa, so we have had many chances to learn about the moon.

· Where does the moon rise from? The east, just like the sun. The Earth’s rotation makes whatever you see in the heavens (stars, planets, etc. ) look they are moving from east to west – day and night.

· How much does the moon move from night to night? It moves by about 1 fist each night. Look at the moon one night, and note the time. Hold your arm out and make a fist with your thumb sticking out a bit and have the bottom of your fist on the moon. Try to remember where the top of your fist is. Go out the next night, and the moon should be around where the top of your fist was the prior night. Obviously, this all varies a bit based on the size of your hand, etc., but it works surprisingly well! The moon goes around the earth in approximately 27 days, so it moves about 13 degrees each night. Your fist approximates 13 degrees.

· Moonrise. If the conditions are right, you can see a moonrise. It looks like a sunrise but with the moon coming up over the horizon. You should be able to see it on the night of a full moon. It should come up right after sunset and be at the opposite side from the sunset. It is magical to watch on a cloudless night!

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HAZEL’S RESEARCH PROJECT

Finally, Hazel decided to undertake a massive research project in Africa. She picked an animal that we had seen for each letter of the alphabet and wrote down a minimum of 5 facts (in some cases 14 facts) about each animal. She then picked pictures we had taken, and we have put it together in a book called “An African Anthology.” Sshh, it’s a surprise for Jamie! She spent so many hours on this project and is so proud of herself. I can’t wait to see his face when we open up the book!

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TRADITIONAL SKILLS

It was eye opening for us all to see villages where people have retained their tribal ways. We learned to make fire, bows and arrows, beautiful jewelry, and more.

Hugh loved learning how to make fire with the Maasai people. You need 2 special pieces of wood: one straight stick made of hard wood and one wide base made of soft wood. If you twist the stick on the base very fast — and for a long time! — you are rewarded with a small glowing ember. You then put that into kindling (or, even cooler, in dried elephant poop!), and then you have a fire.

The kids also learned to make real bows and arrows. In Kenya, our Maasai Warrior guide found just the right branches for the bows and arrows and prepared them with his short sword. He added some string, and voila! Bows and arrows. All in about 10 minutes.

The kids loved learning to shoot and doing target practice. We used the bows and arrows for weeks (and then we then shipped them back to Boston!).

Later, we even made our own Stone Age type arrow heads in South Africa. We used a version of the centuries old technique of the Khoisan people, sharpening bone fragments on stones. It was hard! We learned that sharpening 1 arrow head would take about a week, we cheated a bit and switched to sand paper! When the arrow heads were sharp, we attached them to sticks with strips of bark.

Hazel spent hours with Maasai women in Kenya learning how to bead. They shared no common language, but they and Hazel could communicate, and the women sang as they worked. As a parent, it was quite extraordinary to watch. The women do not use needles or scissors. It really takes skill to do this beading! The women have a tradition of using beaded items to celebrate life milestones, like making special necklaces for marriage or special earrings to show how many Warrior sons she has. Hazel wanted to spend every free moment working with these women, and by the second day I let her go off on her own to spend hours working with them.

In Madagascar, we learned several Malagasy traditional skills, such as basket weaving.

Hazel also got lessons in using traditional face paint made from tamarind tree bark. It is used by Malagasy women for celebrations and also as a sort of natural sunscreen.

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GAMES

We kept finding 2 local board games in Africa. We were not sure what they were, and there were no clear directions. Both were handmade from wood, and they used rocks or seeds as the game pieces. At first, we let Hugh just count by ones and then by twos, and then we made up our own rules about how to play. About a month in, we learned the real rules to marble solitaire and mancala. They have both become family favorites, and we bought a set of each to bring home and play!

While Hazel and Hugh may not have been learning the same content that they would have back in school, both kids did an incredible job stretching outside of their comfort zones, being intellectually curious, remembering animal facts and asking insightful questions. Jamie and I are so proud of the way they tackled Africa head on, especially Hugh, who had a hard time with the lack of a consistent routine and, as our most sensitive child, really struggled with the amount of poverty we saw.

I know this post is far too long, we just learned so much and it is hard to synthesize down to a few anecdotes!