I wasn't sure which box to start with. I finally decided to start with the box I contributed to the exchange, Africa, to give you an idea of what you might be able to put together yourself without doing an exchange. The other boxes are a little more personal and have a few little souvenirs in each of them. Fortunately, my husband spent a few days in Eygpt on a trip he took before we were married. Once I con him into locating and letting me paw through his souvenirs I should be able to add a few things. This is, obviously, the box. I pin punched a sandpaper continent for the top of each. I made a cd of a variety of songs from African children's games as well as performances by African children's choirs and African drumming groups. If you are doing this with middle school-aged children it might be fun to use current pop music from that continent as well. At the bottom of the photo you can see the stamps I made with the help of Google images. If you wanted to be more authentic, Ebay is a good option here. These are the pertinent cards from the Rand McNally set that I purchased. They included Abu Simbel, the Great Mosque of Djenne, the Great Pyramid of Giza, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater, Table Mountain, Victoria Falls, and an Africa facts card. For the swap I put together book about the "day in the life of a child in Africa." Here are some of the pages in the book (still currently unbound. I own a comb binder, but if I laminate it won't punch the holes without breaking. I can't decide if I want to laminate or not.). I wrote about Ngigi, and Igbo girl in Nigeria. I was able to put this together using the educator's kit found here. We were also to include a little book about a festival in that country. I wrote about an Igbo wedding and incorporated it into my "day in the life" book. All of the photos for the booklet were found on the BBC news site. The instructions in the educators kit I mentioned previously direct you to different albums on the BBC site. In addition to the Igbo Wedding, there are at least FORTY other albums of pictures. Twenty of them are narrated "photo journals" that can be made into books (Freetown Family, etc.,). Others are collections of photos by theme (Signs, weather, landscapes) etc., I included many photos of African children right away, here are just a few. I also had a very large stack of additional pictures printed for ourselves. I obviously will not be putting all of these things into the box at once. (I took the picture of the "stack" next to some currency to try to put it in perspective). We all included a paper doll in our boxes. I cheated and found mine in the African Boy and Girl paper doll set by Dover. She has a lot more clothes to choose from, but I'm keeping it simple to start. I chose this outfit because it would be typical of something Ngigi might have worn to the Igbo wedding in the booklet. Also pictured is the recipe card I sent (simple enough for a child to assist in making) and an ostrich feather that fell out of my duster (ostriches are from Africa, hey?). Next is the Africa book from our continents series, an extra papyrus from my husband's trip to Egypt and actual pictures of my husband doing interesting things in Egypt. I was glad to have some more personal photos to send along. In one of the photos he is climbing the step pyramid. "One of these musicians is not like the other..." Finally, the box holds some Toob animals and African currency. Whoops! I forgot to take pictures of our Africa flags, but I'm sure you get the idea. To sum up, here are some resources for filling out your own Africa studies. The BBC news "Africa in Pictures" pages (albums can be found by clicking on the drop-down boxes on the right). Educational resources at Africa Files. Stanford has a crazy amount of links and resources on their "teaching about Africa" page. Other posts in this series: Continent Boxes: Antarctica Continent Boxes: The Challenge Continent Boxes: Australia Continent Boxes: South America Home of: The Ultimate Montessori Blog List The Ultimate Montessori Search Box The Ultimate Montessori Homemade Materials Collaboration