February

South African 

Ndebele Homes

In South Africa, Ndebele women build and decorate a community of mud-walled homes. The mud is readily available and helps to keep the home cool under the hot African sun. The walls are painted white and then decorated with black paint, filled in with bright colors, symbolic of a well-kept home.

Kindergarten students are learning about these South Africa Ndebele homes and creating collages of them combining basic shapes - squares and triangles for walls and roofs. They are decorating and composing these collaged homes and placing them on a background embellished with a large round shape to suggest the hot Africa sun.

Savanna Zebra

Collage

There are three types of zebras in the world, and all are indigenous to Africa. Every zebras is marked with a unique black and white stripe pattern yet, no two zebras have the same pattern - like our finger prints! But, the reason zebras have stripe patterns is a complete mystery to scientists.

These are just some of the facts second graders are learning about Africa's zebras, prior to creating a zebra collage, complete with a one-of-a-kind stripe pattern, warm-colored sun and field of grass suggesting the enormous African savannas where many zebras live.  

Charcoal Elephants

Our 4th and 5th bilingual class is learning about African Elephants, the largest land animals on our planet. These magnificent beasts are extremely intelligent and can have brains that weigh up to 13 pounds. Sadly, their numbers are dwindling due to the popularity of their tusks, which are valued by some cultures, and cause elephants to be illegally hunted. If more isn't done to help the African elephants they could become extinct in the near future.

PS students are learning to draw from observation. But since no African elephants can visit our school, the students are learning to draw elephants from black and white photographs, using vine black charcoal and white charcoal pencils as their media. The students' goal is to produce a charcoal drawing that shows a variety of black, gray and white areas in their work, known as a value scale.  

Maasai Villagers

Our fifth graders are learning about the Maasai, a semi-nomadic group of people who live in East Africa in the countries of Kenya and Tanzania. The Massai people are tall and thin, and they wear distinctive cotton sheets wrapped around their bodies and draped over their shoulders. Typically, these cloths are red with bold black and blue patterns. Both men and women wear jewelry made from shells, bone, ivory, and colored beads from seeds, wood, copper and gourds. The Massai hunt wild animals for food, but they also herd cattle and farm rice, potatoes, and cabbage. 

Fifth graders are learning to use line and simple shapes to draw Maasai-inspired figures. They are adorning their figures' clothes with Maasai-inspired patterns, colors and jewelry, using markers. Spears and baskets are added to suggest tribal members' activities.