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1. What is the most recently sovereign country in Africa, having achieved its independence from South Africa in 1990?
   
   
2. What precious stones are Botswana’s primary export?
   
   
3. What has been South Africa’s ruling party (once led by Nelson Mandela) since multiracial and multiparty elections were held in 1994?
   
   
4. What is Mozambique’s official language?
   
   
5. What country takes its name from a major trading empire which flourished until the 15th century and whose stone ruins stand today as a national monument?
   
   
6. What bird of prey is Zambia’s national symbol and pictured on the country’s flag?
   
   
7. What tiny country is completed surrounded by South Africa?
   
   
8. What country’s 27-year civil war ended in 2002?
   
   
9. What lake (for which the nation on its western shore is named) is the tenth largest body of freshwater in the world and the third largest in Africa after Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika?
   
   
10. What southern African country is an absolute monarchy with no written constitution?

1. In Angola, The most popular urban recreational activity is watching novelas, television soap operas mostly made in Brazil. In wartime, the shows were an escapist diversion that provided some measure of continuity in people’s lives.
   
   
2. In Lesotho, a popular traditional instrument is the lesiba, a stringed reed frequently played by young men as a method of herding cattle, which are trained to follow the music.
   
   
3. In Swaziland, when a woman is married, her mother is given two cattle of her own as part of the bride-price paid by the groom’s family. The cows are considered compensation owed to the mother for the loss of her daughter. One of these cows is called the “wiper away of tears” (insulamnyambeti).

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• Québec gets its name from the Algonquin word kebec, meaning “the place where the river narrows.”
  
  
• Québec produces 75 percent of the world’s maple syrup!
  
  
• Montréal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, France.
  
  
• Canada’s first ice hockey team was formed in Montréal in 1877. Congratulations Ducks! :) Sorry Canada. :(
  
  
• Two Montréalers, a reporter and a photographer, invented the game Trivial Pursuit in 1980.
  
  
• Québec is the only province in Canada where English is not an official language. French is the only official language.

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World Holidays Featured This Month

Namibia – The Day of the African Child – June 16
Marks the 1976 slayings of children in Soweto, South Africa.

Luxembourg – Grand Duke’s Birthday – June 23
This celebration of the monarchy is also called National Day.

Serbia – Vidovdan – June 28
A religious holiday that also commemorates the Battle of Kosovo.

Malta – Imnarja – June 29
A harvest feast dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul.

French Polynesia – Autonomie Interne (Autonomy Day) – June 29
Celebrates Tahitian self-rule. A cultural parade on this day kicks off the Tiurai (meaning “July”) festivities, which last from June until August and include athletic competitions, dancing, pageantry, and other cultural events.

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Theme: How Communities Change

Grade level: K–5

Objective: Students will look at several countries to see factors that shape how a community begins and changes.

National curriculum standard(s):

McREL Geography Standards

Human Systems
Standard 9: Understands the nature, distribution and migration of human populations on Earth's surface. Level II [Grades 3–5] Benchmark 4: Knows the causes and effects of human migration (e.g., European colonists and African slaves to America, movement of people from drought areas in Africa, movement of people from East Asia to North America, effects of physical geography on national and international migration, cultural factors).

Standard 12: Understands the patterns of human settlement and their causes. Level II [Grades 3–5] Benchmark 3: Knows the settlement patterns that characterize the development of a community or state (e.g., from the movement of people into an area previously unoccupied to the competition among villages for economic dominance and growth; from a small number of dispersed settlers with few services to the modern pattern of suburbanization and decentralization).

Environment and Society
Standard 15: Understands how physical systems affect human systems. Level II [Grades 3–5] Benchmark 3: Knows the ways in which human activities are constrained by the physical environment (e.g., effects of weather, climate and land forms on agriculture, recreational activities, availability of water, expansion of settlement).

Standard 16: Understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution and importance of resources. Level II [Grades 3–5] Benchmark 6: Knows the different ways in which resources are used and valued in different regions of the world (e.g., the use of wood in the United States for construction compared to the use of wood in the Dominican Republic for fuel).

Developed by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning

National Geography Standards

Human Systems
Standard 9: The geographically informed person knows and understands the characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on Earth's surface.

Standard 12: The geographically informed person knows and understands the process, patterns, and functions of human settlement.

Environment and Society
Standard 15: The geographically informed person knows and understands how physical systems affect human systems.

Standard 16: The geographically informed person knows and understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources.

Developed by the National Council for Geographic Education

Time requirements
Preparation: 40 minutes
In-class: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Materials
CultureGrams Kids Edition
Butcher paper

Instructions

1. In preparation, read through two or three countries in the CultureGrams Kids Edition (choose countries from different regions and climates), noting factors like location (e.g., island, land-locked, region, etc.), climate (Mediterranean, tropical, desert), history (native inhabitants, colonization, migration, etc.), culture (religion, customs), and natural resources (forests, water, agriculture) that shape how a community begins and develops.
   
   
2. Have students read the CultureGrams Kids Edition texts for the countries you have chosen. Ask students to think, as they read, about why people might have wanted to settle in those particular places.
   
   
3. As a class or in groups, make a list of the factors (for each country) that contribute to the establishment of the community. Discuss the differences. What factors seem the most important?
   
   
4. As a means of discussing what factors make communities grow and change, have students draw a map of their own community on butcher paper. Instruct each student or group of students to identify important features (land, bodies of water, other communities or cities nearby, schools, business and agricultural districts, etc.).
   
   
5. Display the completed map and its features, and discuss what factors influence how or whether a community grows. Compare what students learn about influences on their community with influences in other communities. What factors are the same? What factors are different?

Extension activity

• Have students listen to the news or get help looking through a newspaper to find examples of events that are changing their community. Assign the students to prepare a short presentation to share their events with the class.

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