Cameroon Unit

Some countries have unique things you can think of as landmarks. It’s easy to find a picture of them that seems iconic. I don’t have a good iconic picture for our Cameroon unit, so if you have a better suggestion I would love to hear it. I’ll also admit there were many things that went wrong with our Cameroon Unit, and you’ll have to read all the way down to the recipe to see just how wrong that went (I did not get the recipe from Wattpad this time, there were no emojis in it). But, it did make for a geography lesson that had a story. Yet another crazy mini-unit for our giant Africa Unit.

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Cameroon Unit resources

Okay, let’s see what I can find for Cameroon resources…

11 Fun Facts for Kids about Cameroon– I’m highly amused by the first fact of over 230 languages
Cameroon on National Geographic Kids– National Geographic being a national magazine with good photographers, unlike me, has some really amazing pictures you can see
BBC Cameroon facts– not too surprisingly these are nothing too unique
27 Interesting facts– why don’t more sites go for alliteration and fascinating facts?

And this is early in the alphabet so the video is only 11 minutes long, it’s so weird when today when I’m writing this we watched a video from way late in the alphabet that was over 30 minutes long.

It’s an early Geography Now video so there is no Flag Friday (watch me be incorrect as I’m typing before actually looking it up).

Cameroon Unit recipe

Okay, so funny story about these deep-fried banana fritters. I started making these but the recipe was not right…. I cooked the first one and it was…. not right.

The Artist came downstairs and proceeded to explain to me all the things I had gotten wrong.

Because it went so amazingly wrong, I will not make a recipe card, because no one is going to want to try and make this recipe after you read how it went.

Deep-fried banana fritters ingredients

4 large bananas
1.5 cups flour (the site specified whole wheat, and I don’t think that would have caused the problems)
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
oil for deep frying

Let’s see how wrong this can go

Seriously, while those pictures may look decent, it doesn’t show you how quickly it kind of melded together.

Mash the bananas together, then mix in the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. I really don’t know why you have baking powder, I guess it’s to help it rise.
At this point I’m looking at it, and it has a strange consistency that is kind of like a strange dough consistency, but something is drastically wrong. So stare at it for a little bit, and then add the nutmeg and vanilla. Let sit for 10 minutes.
While it is sitting start heating oil in a pan. I think I heated a combination of olive oil and coconut oil. Once the oil is hot, drop spoonfuls of the batter in.
At this point I had a strange glop that was kind of fried. The Artist came downstairs looked at the recipe and aid, “Mom there is no fat in this recipe. It will not cook right.” She waved off my “You can use bananas in place of eggs as a binding agent” statement with a continued response of “Where is the fat?” and “Where do you get these recipes? This does not seem like it’s real site.” At least there were no emojis and she didn’t tell me you go there for fanfic, not recipes.
She did something to the recipe. I really have no clue what, but she kicked me out of the kitchen declaring me to be worthless. I only exaggerate slightly. Adding random items, and then started frying the rest.
It ended with what you see in the picture. That’s it. That’s how it was made. Somewhere in step 5 we created, and by we, I mean The Artist, created something edible.

I really have no clue how it was supposed to turn out, but I’m pretty sure what I created was not like what they make in Cameroon. I tried.

Cameroon unit: Animals

The other day as we were watching the Geography Now video and Gary Harlowe, discount Steve Irwin, came in and talked about the amazing animals of location starting with S or T, I realized I’d been missing a great opportunity to talk about a way to expand your country units with animals reports, especially since I have an animal report notebook created for just this purpose.

Of course, the first country I decide to do this with is before he started featuring them, so here is my quick google search of cool animals:

Goliath frog
aardvark
African wild dog
black rhinoceros
blue duiker
genet
impala

Cameroon unit notebooking pages

We filled out the Africa notebooking pages as we watched the video and then I added in the information the video didn’t have after the video.

Let’s see what did I write for my fun facts.

They have a province called Extreme North Province, which is just an amusing name
10% of the roads are paved with tar, I wonder how that works
It’s described as Africa in miniature because it has a coast, a savannah, and a jungle
It has exploding lakes, I would love to see that
Muskums (that is probably spelled wrong), which are a type of mud huts

All in all, it was a very quick study, but that’s all good.

More learning fun

I’m gonna pick some middle school projects to share with you.