Exploring Magical Madagascar From Our Kitchen Table
See how blogger Amanda Shaw explored Madagascar with her World Edition subscription! Read on…
If there was ever a real-life country that made you feel like you were visiting a magical place, this must be it!
Madagascar is a fascinating country to learn about with your kids because it’s full of one-of-a-kind surprises: thick-trunked baobab trees, playful lemurs, chameleons the size of your fingertip! We were able to discover these wonders and more, tucked inside a blue-and-white envelope, from the comfort of our own living room!
As my daughter read the letter from Sofia and Sam out loud, her younger brother and sister scoured our big world map, looking for the country that, as the letter stated, “is right off the coast of Africa, and is the world’s fourth largest island.” Easy peasy!
Seasoned travelers as we are with Little Passports, the kids knew to mark the map, put a sticker in their passport and another on their blue suitcase. With the rest of the envelope’s contents spread out before us, off we went! We imagined ourselves setting off along the fantastic Avenue of Baobabs, pictured on the postcard. What would we look like next to these giant trees? Who (or what!) would be on the road with us?
Getting down to business, we started working our way through the Madagascar activity booklet. The first activity we did was to follow step-by-step directions to draw our own chameleons. My kids love these easy drawing tutorials and are always proud of their finished work. After getting their chameleons the way they wanted them, the kids colored them in to match their moods and gave them names!
The souvenir this month was also chameleon-themed: three little toy chameleons with sticky tongues. All three kids loved testing these out on the kitchen table: how far could they launch the sticky tongues, what items could they bring back? The toy chameleons also got names and special spots at the table before we could move on.
Inside the activity book, word puzzles (language arts!), a matching game (logic!), and the labeling of the parts of the baobab tree (science!) kept the kids busy for quite a while. They learned a bit about the history and culture of Madagascar, and also how to use their resources (the letter, a calendar) to find the answers they needed. This is something that, as a parent, I love about Little Passports: the myriad learning opportunities disguised as games.
Finally, the kids wanted to use their Boarding Pass to access the Madagascar-themed game on the Little Passports website. There were lots of fun and giggles to be had while they guided a butterfly through the Amber Mountain National Park!