Geography Travels: Ghana

My son did a lapbook on Ghana when he was in 3rd grade, in place of a unit study.  Follow the link if you’d like to see his Ghana lapbook. 

Here’s my daughter’s geography unit for Ghana (she didn’t do the lapbook):

Week 1

Located Ghana on world map and globe, capital and largest cities; stamped passport, read first paragraph of Wikipedia entry on Ghana

Listened to the national anthem (on the sidebar of Wikipedia entry)

Began reading The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories

Listened to “West Africa song” from Geography Songs

Read The Not-for-Parents Travel Book, Ghana entry

Looked at her brother’s Ghana lapbook

Read entry from The Usborne Book of Peoples of the World

Watched YouTube travel videos:

Discussed center of the world (equater/prime meridian), which is just south of Ghana, in the ocean.

Week 2

Colored the flag of Ghana (Activity Village) and discussed government, currency, and religion

Learned some history and languages

YouTube videos on Twi:

Read from Children Just Like Me and did notebook page (Homeschool Creations)

Week 3

Geography from A to Z—gulf, equator, beach, plains, rivers, forest, hills, lake (man-made)

Labeled a map of Ghana (using an outline from Enchanted Learning and this MAP to help us)

Drew a chimpanzee from Draw Write Now, Book 7; discussed Ghana animals

Drew a hyena from Draw Write Now, Book 8

Week 4

Culture: art, music, dance (Youtube videos)

Read Around the World in 80 Tales, p. 123 “Rain Song”

Watched Anansi videos; read books Anansi the Spider: A Tale From the Ashanti and Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears

Notebook page (country fact sheet, Homeschool Creations)

We were going to make peanut bread (Children’s World Cookbook, p. 24-25), but we ran out of time. 

We did play some Ghanaian games

I did find one more book for Ghana, but it was long after we did the unit (my youngest will benefit).  It’s called Pretty Salma, a Little Red Riding Hood story set in Ghana.

Online Resources:

A to Z Kids Stuff

List of Countries of the World.

National Geographic Kids

Ghana and India Lapbooks

Our 2nd lapbook was on Ghana. We got many of our templates from homeschoolshare.com and from guesthollow.com. Some booklets we made ourselves.

Our 3rd lapbook was on India. This one was a challenge in a way, because India is such an interesting place! I don't know how to describe it. It's diverse, yet its culture is so unique. There are so many things that come to the mind when you mention India--Taj Mahal, elephants, tigers, curry, saris... We kept making more and more booklets to get all the information we were finding. When I went to put the lapbook together, I didn't have enough space, so I had to add more flaps. Then I had TOO much space left, so I had to find more stuff to put in it! One very good website for India was kidsofcourage.com. They have several coloring sheets you can download and copy for free. The India lapbook took quite awhile to complete, but it's finished, and Isaac is very proud of it--it's the biggest one we've done!

Our Lapbooks

I had read about lapbooks a few years ago, but I wasn't interested at the time. They seemed like they would be too much work. When this past school year began I had in mind to do notebooking for Geography. Halfway through the year, we were way behind, and Isaac was bored with it. So I looked up lapbooking again and decided to try it. Isaac loves it! Like a lot of kids, he doesn't like the writing parts, but he enjoys putting together all the little books, and he loves showing his lapbooks to people. He's very proud of them, and guess what? He's learned loads, and he remembers it all! Lapbooks are awesome! I will say, however, that they have taken longer to put together than what I had thought. I had expected to spend 2-3 weeks on each country, but there are so many things you can do! I have problems picking and choosing a small amount of information to include, and there are lots of online lapbook templates for countries. So...since January, we've only completed 4 (well nearly finished with #4). I've found some fresh new ideas for geography notebooking, so I may give that another try next year. I think I'll focus on learning activities and minimize the number of pages. I still love lapbooks, though, so we're going to try lapbooking other topics next year! We may make a few smaller lapbooks for geography (specific topics), science, and for the stories we read together. Well, enough of all that. Our lapbooks this year were on Egypt, Ghana, India, and Italy. They coincided with our ancient history studies. I had planned to do Greece, Israel, and China as well, but we ran out of time! As you'll see from my photos, our first (Egypt) isn't quite as good as the others, and with each successive lapbook, we had to expand, so they got bigger in size.