Christmas Around the World: Ghana
Day 5 of our Christmas learning brought us to the African country of Ghana. We basically knew nothing about Ghana, but found the information we learned about the country very interesting! Ghana has recently experienced an economic boom as they are the world’s second largest exporter of cocoa, and their gold industry is doing very well!
Ghana is a small nation that borders Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo, as well as the Atlantic Ocean, on the northwestern coast of Africa. The people of Ghana speak 66 different languages, and each tend to have their own traditions and beliefs. However, Christianity is the most common religion practiced in Ghana. The Ghanian people go to evening mass on Christmas Eve, and again on Christmas morning. After church, they exchange gifts with family and friends. Their gifts are usually food items! Ghana begins celebrating Christmas on December 20 and their parties last all the way through the first week of January. Aside from going to a church service, most children participate in a nativity play, and set off fireworks to celebrate Christmas Eve.
What We Did
We began our lesson by reading about the country of Ghana and locating it on a map, followed by reading about Christmas in Ghana. Author Rachel Isadora has retold the story The Night Before Christmas and features Santa in traditional Kente clothing. To learn more about Kente style apparel, visit here. I printed off a Santa coloring page and had the kids design Santa’s outfit Kente style.
We then learned more about cocoa beans and chocolate in Ghana by watching a few videos, found here and here. After that, we followed up by watching a few more videos about Christmas in Ghana. Another cute video can be found here.
Finally, our journey to Ghana is complete with a traditional Ghana pound cake! This is another perfect job for Chloe to help sharpen some basic math skills, along with working in the kitchen.
UPDATE: Chloe almost burned the house down making the pound cake. We are fairly certain she did not follow the directions very well, because it didn’t taste right. However, she tried, and we will just have to make a pound cake another time!