Comparing lives
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East African Tastes for Harvest
Try out these tastes!
This simple food topic starter introduces pupils to some new foods/crops and helps them think about what can be grown in other countries and how these crops might be grown and harvested. Print out these sheets then make the foods (we have kept them quite simple). Set them out in a line and either have sheets face up so that they can see what they are, or place face down and ask pupils to guess what they are. You could extend this idea by choosing several foods and as a class deciding whether they can be grown or produced in the UK, African countries or both.
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Four Ugandan children’s games
A collection of games played by African children
Many of the games that children play in East Africa are about things in their everyday lives: food, family and homemaking. Children play them in school fields, at home or on un-used land in their neighbourhood. These games, on the pdf below the video, are from a group of children near Iganga, Uganda. Before Send a Cow helped their families, many of these children were malnourished, only ate one meal a day and had very little energy to play. Through training in natural farming with their families, the children are now able to enjoy their childhoods and grow up healthily – having enough nutritious food for three meals a day and having the skills to grow food for the rest of their lives.
If you don’t have access to Vimeo.com to watch videos at school, register for an account on their website at home and then you can download all our videos using the link on the bottom right of each video page.
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African Walk on Wednesday
Motivate your pupils to walk to school!
For Walk on Wednesday, why not do something different to motivate your pupils to be healthy and help them learn about Africa while they walk? You’ll be joining in with the thousands of children across Africa who walk to school every day. There are ideas and resources for what you can do on each day, (such as playing African games, making plastic bag footballs and eating African fruit), along with a Powerpoint to introduce the idea to pupils. Plus, there are some information boxes about life in East Africa and illustrations to help you to create a classroom display. We’d also love it if you chose to take the opportunity to get children sponsored and fundraise for Send a Cow.
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East African Advent Tree
Have an African Christmas in your classroom
A great resource for Christmas/Advent, these sheets help make a fantastic acacia tree that will create a colourful wall display. During Advent, your children will learn about Christmas in African countries and do something kind at school or home as hangings are added to the acacia tree. They are large file sizes, so please be patient. You can also see all of the information on a page with links to recipes etc here.
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Rose’s Journey - game
A board game to understand more about life in Rwanda
This simple classroom game helps pupils to compare their lives with that of eleven-year-old Rose from Rwanda. Children can look at similarities and differences with their lives and have fun making their own game, deciding how the game works and discussing whether things in Rose’s life are positive or negative. You can introduce her to your class using interactive content on our kids site, Cowforce.com.
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Life in Lesotho - video clip
A day in the life of Karabo
Find out what nine-year-old Karabo does during her day and see how Send a Cow have helped her family. If you don’t have access to Vimeo.com at school, register for an account on their website at home and then you can download all our videos using the link on the bottom right of each video page. For more information for Welsh schools wanting to partner with a Lesothan school, visit the Dolen Cymru website.
A child’s day in Lesotho - keyhole gardens in action from Send a Cow on Vimeo.
You can download these videos for use in schools (if Vimeo is blocked) by creating a Vimeo.com account, going to the video and choosing the ‘download’ option on the right.
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Spot the difference - poverty comparison
Use the Povertron to compare lifestyles
The Povertron is a machine used by Gold the cow on Cowforce.com to compare everyday items in a kitchen in the UK with their Ugandan equivalents. So, when she points to the electric light bulb, the Povertron converts it to a paraffin lamp in Uganda. This can lead to some interesting discussion about ways of life, consumption and what it means to be poor. The Spot the difference sheet is a simple activity to record learning from this activity.
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Rose’s day
Compare life in the UK with a Rwandan child's day
Linked to Rose’s day on the Cowforce.com website, these lesson ideas help pupils to compare their daily lives with those of Rose from Rwanda. They can fill in activities on a time circle and read more information about her day, prompting further discussion and learning about living in a diverse world.
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Meet Rose
Visit a Rwandan orphan's house
These lessons can help pupils to understand what everyday life is like for a child in Rwanda and link to the African Rose page on the Cowforce.com website. Rose shows visitors around her house and supporting resources explain more about her life and look at the concepts of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. A Google Earth file is also provided, locating Rose’s house in Rwanda.
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Marie-Rose’s busy day
A day in the life of Marie-Rose from Rwanda
This worksheet is based around the daily routine of Marie-Rose from Rwanda. In this activity, pupils compare their daily lives with Marie-Rose’s and use fractions and decimals to help them. The sheet can be used to comapre lives and as a start of discussion about living in a diverse world.
