In Story of the World, Vol. 4, Chapter 33, we visit Argentina to learn about Evita Peron and oh, yeah, her husband, too. Later, we travel to the Belgian Congo for one sad story after another. The history of Africa has been such a source of heartache for us, but we are mere spectators. Africans have endured much injustice and cruelty during colonization.
We get passionate about combining science and history.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” plays in my head any time we talk about Argentina and President Peron. I teared up while reading the story for the children because the story is so artistically ingrained in my memory, it touches me all over again.
I hear the words even now, “Oh what a circus oh what a show, Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress called Eva Peron. We’ve all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right.” What a brilliant writer, right? Not to mention the catchy tune.
Periodic Table activity, for minerals from Congo
I have a CD of Lloyd Webber’s most famous musical pieces and we play it in the car. The kids love Memory from Cats and the theme song from Phantom of the Opera. Anyhow. Evita is pretty cool, too.
For an activity, we chose the code of the Congo’s valuable elements – a bit of science built into the history lesson. The kids actually enjoyed looking the elements up in the periodical table.
