Saturday, September 11, 2010

Virtual Trip to Timbuktu, Mali

Our class decided to take a trip to Timbuktu, Mali. We have been studying about Our Community, Communities Across the U.S and Communities Around the World in Social Studies. We went to Google Earth and took a look at our community right here at Longs Creek then off to Timbuktu. We were able to see schools, playgrounds, neighborhoods, markets and more. We discussed and compared the differences between our community and the community of Timbuktu. We discovered many differences for example, the houses were made out of mud bricks and most of our houses are made of rock, brick or stucco. We can see that Timbuktu is located in the desert by all the sand. Their markets are not like going to HEB we discovered. We saw stands set up with umbrellas to sale fruits and vegetables. We also learned that they entertain themselves by listening to Griots, or storytellers and playing instruments called Koras. After our time spent visiting Timbuktu, we wrote our weekly Friday letters in our Dear...journals to our parents about our trip to Timbuktu. Every student also has their very own blog at kidblog.org/msjordansclass2/. They plan to blog about their very own experiences as well. The link is in the left sidebar on my blog. If you would like to take a look and visit their blogs, feel free to comment. We are just beginning and they have only begun to blog at home right now. We will begin blogging at school this week.