• Physical map of Africa
  
  
• Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

Anticipatory Set:

Ask the children if they should be kind even if no one is looking. Give some examples of quiet kind acts that could be done without anyone knowing you have done them. Discuss why you would choose to do them when no one would be there to acknowledge your kind deed.

• Hold up the cover of the book Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters. Activate prior knowledge by asking children to describe what they see.
  
  
• Read the book to the class. Discuss the artwork and the different types of wildlife that are seen on each page. Ask students why the environment in the book looks different from where they live.
  
  
• On selected pages, stop and encourage the students to interact with the book in the following ways:
  
  
• Hypothesize about what may happen next, what the motives of the characters might be, and why something is happening.
  
  
• Have children discuss other solutions that may have been tried and predict what the consequences would have been.
  
  
  • Reread the book, inviting the children to add further comments on what they see and think about the story. Ask students why a king would want to make sure that his country's future queen would not be a selfish person.
    
    
  • Have students sequence the trials that both girls encountered on their journeys and analyze how each girl responded as either unselfish or selfish. They can list the events or draw pictures showing the trials in their journeys.
    
  • Trace the route traveled by the girls on a physical map to show rivers and mountains.

Spend some time looking at the map of Africa with the students. Read the names of the countries and talk about different regions and their climates and wildlife.