Homeschooling at Walt Disney World

We’ve returned from our African safari!  What an amazing variety of animals call the jungles and savannas of Africa home.

Our travels at Disney’s Animal Kingdom gave us an opportunity to see many interesting and unique animals “up close and personal”.  We did our homework before we went to learn about the habitats/biomes of Africa and what animals need to be able to live in the different areas.  Here is what we were able to see and learn when we visited the animals in their own habitats:

The Pangani Forest Trail includes areas with lush vegetation and waterfalls which are home to animals such as the colobus monkeys, the okapi (imagine giraffe that has a zebra body) and beautiful birds and ducks (too many to mention but there is a wonderful guide available to help identify the various types).  An indoor “research station” has displays with naked mole rats (not as cute as in the Kim Possible show), a pancake tortoise, a scorpion, frogs, snakes and more.  As our journey continued we saw hippos enjoying a swim and meerkats on the savanna (on the day we were visiting the guide claims they were keeping a look out for a pesky hawk that was in the area).  As the trail winds toward the end there are two groups of gorillas to see (one was a family group and the other was a group of male gorillas).

Along The Kilimanjaro Safari we found hippos, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, flamingos (their private little island is in the shape of a hidden Mickey), lions, warthogs, gazelle, impala, a cheetah and crocodiles.  The Safari is designed to be more of an entertaining attraction than a science lesson (so it was nice that we did some research before we set out on our safari), but the guides do a nice job of including a few interesting facts along the way.  There is also a large sign posted inside of each Safari vehicle that shows a picture and the name of each animal on the safari to help everyone identify their favorites.

To cap off our African adventure we attended The Festival of the Lion King.  We have been to Animal Kingdom more times that I can count, but for some reason we had never taken the time to visit this amazing show…I had no idea what we were missing!!  This is a beautiful show that is fun for the kids (their favorite characters from the Lion King are front and center) but also a wonderful celebration of African music, dance and costumes.

We enjoyed our studies of African habitats and animals.  Now we can get our passports ready as we head to Asia!

We’ve wrapped up our learning activities for our January book club selection of “The Jungle Book”.  The kids’ reaction to our new book club format exceeded all of our expectations!

Here are a few additional things we did and learned on our journey –

We allowed each family to select a version of the book that worked for them — some read illustrated classics while others read the unabridged version.  This was a great way to allow everyone to read at a level that was appropriate for their family.

We had each child conduct their own research about the author and about the time period in which the story was written.  Our children are at an age where they are interested in putting everything on a timeline as this helps them to better visualize the time period and events that may have impacted the author and his story telling.

We included a writing assignment, for this lesson we had the children write a newspaper article about a scene in one of the stories.  They learned about the various elements of a newspaper article, selected the scene they wanted to write about and created their own dramatic and fact filled stories.  It was fun to see their interests and personalities come through as they described their favorite scenes.

One of the children’s favorite activities was experiencing different versions of the stories on CDs and as movies.  Of course we watched the Disney version of the Jungle Book (who doesn’t love the fun songs!) and we found the Chuck Jones Collection, an animated version of Mowgli’s Brothers and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.  We also enjoyed an audio CD version of the book by storyteller Jim Weiss.  We listed to the different versions of the stories and had great conversations about the similarities and differences of each presentation.

And of course we topped off our adventure with a trip to the Magic Kingdom and a ride on the Jungle Cruise.  Yes, I understand that the Jungle Cruise isn’t exactly based on The Jungle Book, but it was a fun way to wrap-up our lesson.  Since many of the silly jokes zoomed right past our kids, the moms enjoyed a few laughs while the kids gave names to all of the animals we saw along the journey.

I’m happy to say that our adventure was fun and educational.  We were able to bring a book to life and explore it for a month and as a result we will have many great memories to share!

Last fall I worked with a couple of other homeschool families to start a book club.  The goals were simple – to introduce our children to classic literature and to incorporate a writing/public speaking element (with each book we would introduce a different writing activity for the children to complete and share with the group).  The kids had a wonderful time talking about the books with their friends and continuing the activities at home.

For the spring we decided to add a few more elements to make things even more interesting.  We decided to incorporate additional language arts/lapbook activities for the children to do at home as well as link the books we are reading to something at WDW.  We are just two weeks into our new and improved book club and the kids are more excited than ever (something we’re very pleased about since it’s a group of 8-10 year old boys who usually complain about reading!!).

For January we selected the “Jungle Book.”   We did online research for resources and found some great materials.   Our favorites include –  “The Jungle Book Study Guide (Saddleback Classics)” and   “Jungle Book Classroom Connections” .  We even found a film education guide for seeing the Jungle Book movie.

Our plan is for the kids to read the book at home on their own, then we will all come together twice during the month for group activities.  For the first meeting we discussed some of the basic elements of the book, participated in a cooking activity (they baked “snakes on a stick” ) and gave the kids a writing assignment to work on at home.

For our next meeting we will visit the Magic Kingdom to ride the “Jungle Cruise” together and after that we’ll find a spot to sit and give them a chance to share their writing assignments with each other.

Some of the other at-home activities will include researching the author, doing a book report, making other recipes and watching the movie of the Jungle Book (and comparing it to the book).

So far it’s been a “wild” adventure and the kids are excited that we have been so creative in pulling everything together!  We’ll keep you posted on our progress…

My youngest son LOVES animals so we are very excited to shift our science focus to animals and habitats.  Our first stop on this journey will be the animals (and their habitats) of Africa.

We are going to spend just a week or two on the subject therefore I don’t need any materials that are overly complex.  I have found a couple of wonderful resource to help us map out our adventure.

The first is Enchanted Learning which has numerous printouts on the subject.  The site’s main menu offers the ability to find information based on animal names, biomes (for Africa you could look at deserts, grasslands, etc.), or geography (select Africa).  The site offers printable books, “label me” sheets, facts and information, coloring pages, craft ideas and more.  We will probably use the animal pages as they provide information about the characteristics of the animal as well as printable sheets to color and label.  We’ll select a few animals each day that we would like to learn more about.

We will also be using a resource called “Discovering the Continents: Animals of Africa” (available through CurrClick).

Here is a description, from the author:  In this unit we will be looking at the different habitats and what animals they support. We will learn about predators, prey and scavengers and the amazing partnerships some animals have developed to survive and thrive. We will also be looking at game reserves and nature conservancies and the role they play in Africa. We will learn about different animals and tracking them.

This unit study package includes many hands-on activities like lap-n-note pages, animal alphabet cards, an African Safari game and journal pages.  This is a downloadable file that will appeal to a wide variety of ages.

All of these at-home efforts will lead up to a day of fun and learning at Animal Kingdom.  Before we head out we will be sure to learn about some of the animals we will meet as we travel the Kilimanjaro Safari and Pangani Forest Trail.

We’ll fill in the details on our “Learning” part of our trip after we return from the African safari!