me, my sponsored child and her mother

Ever since I saw this Sponsored Child Lapbook, I have wanted to do some activities that relate to the locale of our sponsored children. We sponsor 2 children in Burkina Faso, Africa through Compassion International and one girl in the Dominican Republic through World Vision. (<—link to my trip with World Vision)

I’ve found a few books at the library about the Dominican. And just one that mentioned Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is not the popular African country that Rwanda and Kenya are. (If you are looking for books about Kenya, Vanessa has some great suggestions!) Now I’m basically trying to pick up any book that shows the WHOLE WORLD. I want my kids to see they are not the only ones on the planet.

This week I found a seek-and-find, where’s-waldo type book called, Gigi and Zachary’s Around-the-World Adventure. There are fun illustrations of Gigi the Giraffe and Zachary the Zebra traveling all over the world. On the bottom of each page are words to search for. Obviously my kids are too young too read, but I can read them and then we can search for them together. The best part is they don’t know what all the words mean so we’re learning lots of new vocab and culture! The Indonesian page had us looking for “a hornbill, house on pilings and a sarong”  while the Istanbul picture showed us “mosque, quay and macaw”.

Asa and I looked at this book for a good 20 minutes when we first got it home. When Lydia and I sat down to look at it, it was perfect because the first page is Africa so we got to talk about our kids, Alizeta and David–and imagine them in the same scene!

I’m praying books like these will remind my kids that not only did God create the world but that He loves everyone on the planet and sent His son to die for them (John 3:16)!

Now, I’m on a mission to find more books like this–maybe even a fun atlas or two. What all-around-the-world books do you and your children like?

linked to Feed Me Books Friday at Little Sprout Books