KONOS Unit: Stewardship - Africa Week 4 & 5

Here is our "4th & 5th" week of Stewardship - Africa for our KONOS unit studies that should have been posted last school year!  We had a lot of fun learning about the Ashanti people of Ghana and neighboring African countries such as Nigeria & Liberia.  One of our favorite parts was reading about missionary Mary Slessor.  My kids didn't want me to stop reading.  Our stewardship focus was managing money wisely this week and giving your first fruits to the Lord.

We learned about the Ashanti people hunting snails so we had a snail snack and we used oranges as our snail meat to string onto skewers over our "fire" and then ate our snails as a snack.

We also made clay "bronze" weights since the Ashanti used to use gold dust as a currency but the kids decided not to spray paint them since they liked how they looked with their bright colors.

 

Other fun activities were to carry babies in slings and walk with baskets with food on their heads.  We read about kente cloth and colored kente cloth designs but didn't get to actually designing our own kente cloth on old white sheets.

We named the kids according to the tradition of the Ghanese people and wrote their new names on index cards.  Then the kids dramatized  some of Ghanese life.  Bella pretended to be a Ghanese Nana or chief with all her gold jewelry and being carried in a hammock and Jake is the okyeame or interpreter for the chief.  Leah is the servant carrying the chief's umbrella (a symbol of his authority) and Sam is the official drummer.  They loved this!  

 We discussed Nigeria as well with Spider Stories, talking drums, singing Kumbayah, & reading Mary Slessor. 

We did a number of map activities.  We touched on some other countries where we learned about latex and watched a youtube video.  We learned/ read about Harvey S. Firestone.  We learned about/ ate peanuts and had eaten Groundnut Soup previously.  We read all about cacao beans and how chocolate is made and watched a youtube Chocolate Factory video, among other things.

These are just a few of the activities that KONOS Character Curriculum has to offer that really utilize the philosophy of KONOS - the 5 Ds: Do, Discover, Dramatize, Dialogue, & Drill.  Plus the main focus is on the character trait & my kids love it!