History in Action!

We are using Story of the World Volume 4 for History this year. We started a few weeks ago but are only on chapter 3 because we are getting together with friends to do the activity and map portion of the lesson. My friend is a super busy home school mom, writer, editor, entrepreneur so we can only meet when her schedule allows us. Anyway, I have been thinking over and over the last few weeks what activity to do. I did not particularly care for any in the guide for this lesson so I combined 2 of them somewhat. I made the kids pretend we were traveling back in time to search for Dr. Livingstone in the wilds of Africa.

I had them prepare back packs with things they would need for the journey. The girls, in true girl fashion, packed lotion, shampoo, a pet dog, a pet bear, a blanket, chocolates, oranges, water, and of course the Nintendo DS. The boys, in true boy fashion, packed the weapons (bows and arrows, bombs, swords, daggers, super heroes, etc.), food and lots of it, sticks for fire, blankets and toys. We were ready!

We began our journey on boat. It was rough but we made it to Cape Town. Since it was night we made camp and had us some dinner. We set up a fire and talked about how we would start looking for Livingstone the next day. We heard some elephants near by and there were monkeys swinging from the vines about our heads, but fortunately no lions. The next morning we brushed our teeth, the girls put lotion on so they would not smell since we had no river near by to bath in, broke down camp and headed north. The map carrier got the map confused and had us walk straight tot he bottom of a mountain. It was tough going but we got ourselves and all of our stuff up the mountain (stairs). As we continued to head North we almost walked right into a heard of sleeping lions. Our translator spotted them and we were able to avoid them.....almost. One man was busy looking the wide open sky and did not notice we had turned a different direction. he ended up right in the middle of the pack. The male lion awoke and gave chase. The weapons came in handy and we had lion stew for mid morning meal.

We continued north when we ran into another small mountain and then into a very wild African tribe.










Our translator tried to ask if they had seen Dr. Livingstone, but with dialects being so similar here, she ended up insulting them and we had to flew under a carpet of arrows trying to make us lunch. We safely escaped with not one person injured. That was close. We camped again to collect our thoughts and energies near a river. We restocked on water, and applied more mosquito repellent. They are ruthless here. We updated our journals with the mornings activities. We decided to split up here. The cook headed straight west to set up the camp for the night. Dinner would be ready by the time we reached him and we could wonder more slowly asking questions of the natives. The main group headed north west. They ran into a reporter from NY who was also hunting for Livingston. We were close to getting Livingstone's general direction, but failed when our Russian companion insulted the Americans. We had to head out of there FAST! Also our translator was proving to be more of a problem than help. Every tribe she spoke with she insulted and we were chased many times for an offense no one understood.







Finally one brave companion went to his many books on the subject and discovered that Livingstone died near Central Africa and we were close to his death date so he must currently be in that part of the country. We scrambled again and headed to Central Africa. We searched and searched and found no clue. We set up camp near a river when out of the vines walks by the man himself....Dr. David Livingstone. We were surprised to see him but very excited. We had accomplished our mission. We tried to warn him of his impending death if he did not leave Africa with us, but he was a stubborn man. We think he really loved this county and would not leave for any reason. We bid our farewells and returned to the present.