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Welcome to Madagascar For Kids with Karyn from CASE OF ADVENTURE! We have a fun 22 page Madagascar Printable Pack for you to download, including a fill-in map, flag, passport stamps, fun info page, crossword puzzle, wordsearch postcards, collectable animal cards and more! Read or listen to Madagascar for Kids, watch the videos and download the Madagascar for Kids printable pack. Click the play button in the player above to listen now (or listen in on iTunes or your favorite podcast app).     Madagascar for Kids Today we are going to be talking about Madagascar. Madagascar is a BIG island off the coast of Africa – it’s the fourth largest island in the world. It’s even bigger than Great Britain and almost as big as the state of Texas. It’s home to thousands of animal species, such as the well-known lemur. Many species are not found anywhere else in the world like the fossa, the tomato frog, the sifaka (pronounced shifark) and the indri which are also part of the lemur family. In Madagascar you will find lush rainforests, beaches and coral reefs, mountainous areas, irrigated rice fields and extinct volcanoes. The “Avenue of the Baobabs,” is a dirt road lined with massive old, old trees called baobab trees. Some of the trees are 800 years old! It was the famous explorer, Marco Polo who first called the island Madagascar – by accident actually. He thought he had visited the Somali port of Mogadishu and got the name wrong – he wrote Madageiscar in his memoirs – and so the Island became Madagascar. Madagascar has gone by many names. When it became a free country in 1958 it became the Malagasy Republic, then in 1975, its people renamed it the Democratic Republic of Madagascar and then in 1993, it changed its name to the Republic of Madagascar. The busy capital of Madagascar is Antananarivo. Some people use its French colonial name Tana but Antananarivo is it’s real name. The president of Madagascar has the longest surname of any president anywhere in the world. His name is Hery Rajaonarimampianina, (AIR-ee rah-zhow-nah-ree-mahm-pee-AHN) THE LANGUAGE Madagascar has two official languages, Malagasy and French. The Malagasy Language doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. There are lots of different versions of the language – or what we call dialects so it can be a bit confusing if you are trying to learn the language. hello is  Manao ahoana (manna horna) goodbye is veloma (filorma) yes is eny (yeny) no – tsia My name is Karyn.            No anarako dia (nuw anara ku dia) Karyn. Now you try with your name in there! THE FLAG AND THE CURRENCY The flag of Madagascar has two stripes going across – red on top and green below. Then there is a white stripe which goes down the left of the flag. The flag used to be just red and white. Soon after WWII, Madagascan people fought a war to try to become independent from France but they were defeated. It was only about ten years later that France allowed them to start to become independent and their flag was chosen. The white is said to stand for purity and the red for sovereignty; the green represents the coastal regions and symbolizes hope. Madagascar has its own independence day to celebrate when they officially became independent from France’s rule over them. Their independence day is the 26th June. They celebrate with music and dancing and fireworks! There are no laws against fireworks in Madagascar – so they go wild. It’s a little scary! You can listen to the Madagascan national anthem on Wikipedia here. The currency that the people of Madagascar use is called the ariary (uh-ri-harry). For 1 US dollar you could buy almost 3000 madagascan ariary , for 1 British pound you could get about 4000 ariary and for 1 South African rand about 220 ariary. Now I’m going to tell you about a queen  from long ago in Madagascar. During the 1800s, Queen Ranavalona wanted to preserve Madagascar’s traditional beliefs and she decided to send lots of missionaries who had come to share the gospel,