For the Multicultural Kid Blogger’s World Cup series, the final country I am presenting is Ghana!!! I love the Ghana team, nicknamed “The Black Stars,” especially when they dance the Azonto when they score! Here’s an introduction to their soccer team, followed by a Ghana profile and some activities to share with your kids:
Ghana Profile and Info:
Capital: Accra
Language: English, Akan, Ewe, Dagbani, Dangme, Dagaare, Ga, Nzema, Kasem, Gonja, and other indigenous languages
Independence Day: March 6, 1957 (from UK)
Popular Holidays: New Years (Jan 1), Independence Day (Jan 6), Holy Week/Easter (varies), Labor Day (May 1), Africa Day (May 25), Republic Day (Jul 1), Eid al-Fitr (varies), Eid al-Adha (varies), National Farmers’ Day (Dec 5), Christmas Day (Dec 25).
Physical Geography: Ghana is a small, rectangular shaped country in West Africa, just north of the equator. It borders Côte d‘Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to the east, with the southern coast along the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean.
Ghanaian Flag:
Ghanaian National Anthem:
Learn about Adinkra Painting from Ghana
Read Ghanaian Traditional Folktales
Listen to Ghanaian Highlife Music
Read a Fun Twist: the Ghanaian Goldilocks
Try Fried Plantains from Ghana
Every time Ghana plays I will post a new activity to learn more about the beautiful Ghanian culture:).
If you love the World Cup and want to use it to teach your kids about the world, be sure to follow our World Cup For Kids Pinterest Board so you can follow all of the posts as different countries play. I will be sharing many of the activities on our facebook page too. Also, there is a great World Cup For Kids Printables pack to use with your kids.
Great post (as usual!) Just wondering if you know why so many of the soccer teams from Africa seem to come from the same region. Is that always the case? I read once that soccer was popular in South America because of the influence of the British who were there building railroads. Something similar going on here?
Let me ask around and see- I’m not sure, but the European colonies theory sounds right!
Colonialism has played a big role pretty much anywhere in the world, be it via the English, the French, Spanish or Portuguese. With the exception of North America, for some reason, football is the biggest sport worldwide. (North) Western Africa has had a lot of influence from both the English and French, whereas the North East, East and South had been mostly colonized by the English and therefore they brought football with them. Hope this helps at least a little 🙂
Nice page! However, I’d like to point out an error in the languages. Ghana officially has (I believe) 11 state sponsored languages (plus many other non-sponsored languages), not just English and Akan.
Oooh, thank you so much!!!! I will add them in. I am passionate about world languages and should have researched that more carefully- thank you SO much for pointing it out!!!
Thanks so much! I felt like I was being picky because your page really is great, but now it feels much better. It always amazes me how many languages (I think it might be 47 total languages, but I forget!) are spoken in a country the size of Oregon. Amazing! (BTW – I’m v. impressed with the speed that you changed that!)
🙂 Aw, thanks!:) Wow- 47 languages IS an incredible amount of languages in that size of a country! It is amazing and impressive to me that they have been able to maintain the linguistic distinctions. My sister studies Quechua (an indigenous language from Peru) and just made a documentary countering the idea that it is a “dying” language (in fact the docu is called “Living Quechua”). I think it is so important to conserve diverse languages that have been here for centuries, and are losing speakers due to migration, globalization, etc.