Ideas and resources
Do our children really need to learn cursive writing in today’s world? Um YES! I am a big believer in keeping things old school. Here is an interesting article outlining 5 important reasons why your children should continue to learn how to do cursive writing. Don’t worry though if your School decides to remove it from the curriculum then you can create your own writing sheets and teach your children at home.
Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in southeast Africa. It’s a nation with a long history that has been marked in modern times by coups and ethnic conflict.
The Burundi flag has wedges of red and green with white stripes between them, with a white circle in the center and three six-pointed stars in red outlined in green inside that. The three stars represent the three main ethnic groups — Hutu, Tutsi and Twa — as well as the three words in the national motto, which are unity, work and progress.
“Burundi Bwacu” is the national anthem, which means “Our Burundi.” It was adopted when the country gained independence in 1962.
The transvaal lion, a subspecies of African lion, is said to be the national animal, but the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website on national symbols only lists the flag and the national anthem. Symbol Hunt also lists the lion, as well as the great blue turaco as the national bird and the bujumbura as national flower, which looks like a hibiscus.
That link for the bird above is a video kids can watch to see and hear what a great blue turaco is like.
Learn about Lake Tanganyika, which is the longest freshwater lake in the world and the second deepest. It forms part of the boundary of Burundi with the DRC.
Read the story of explorers Henry Stanley and David Livingstone, who met in Ujiji, Tanzania, but whose meeting is memorialized with a big rock in Burundi that overlooks Lake Tanganyika.
Spend some time learning about African lions and check out these ideas for learning about lions from Montessori Nature.
Learn about the karyenda, a type of drum that was once featured on the flag of Burundi. Traditionally this drum was a sacred object and the king was said to be able to interpret the beating of the drum as a message for the kingdom. Watch some traditional Burundi drummers here.
For kids who like creepy stories, tell them about Gustave, the ancient and deadly crocodile who might have eaten up to 300 people.
Burundi is known for its pottery, so you can make pinch pots or play with clay in other ways while talking about how clay pots are made and used in cooking there.
According to The Flavor Vortex, boko book harees is considered the national dish. This combination of chicken and bulgur is easy to cook and kids might like it, too. Get the recipe from Naptime Prep Cook or Jess Eats and Travels (this one looks like it has a lot more turmeric).
Yes, I was very dismayed when I found out the schools around here stopped teaching cursive a decade ago. How are kids supposed to read historical documents, sign a check or contract?
Schools are dumbing down the kids now.
*rant* So americans are still writing cursive the same way it was written in the 18th century? Cos over here it has evolved. The cursive I learned in school in the 80’s is different from what my old aunt and grandma learned and that’s different from 19th c cursive, which is different from 18th c cursive. In fact, most in my and my parents’ generations struggle with 19th c cursive and find 18th close to impossible to decipher most of the time. My sis is into genealogy and she hates going back to the 18th c because it’s so hard to read the handwriting (not least since you have to keep in mind that we all have our personal style and that included the priests writing the documents). And she has spent several years reading old cursive. Kids can’t automatically read historical documents just because they can write in cursive (and, honestly how many adults have ever used their knowledge of it to read important documents themselves?). No, I don’t buy that argument.
Knowledge of old cursive is useful and, yes, calligraphy is beautiful. That doesn’t mean it needs to be mandatory in school, other things are much more important. I do however get the importance of signatures, one does still use that sometimes to sign documents, but it is possible to create a signature without being skilled at cursive. It doesn’t have to be legible to begin with. *end of rant*
As for what killed cursive, now that computers are being blamed, this is a good article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/