Field trips enrich and expand the curriculum, strengthen observation skills by immersing children into sensory activities, increase children’s knowledge in a particular subject area and expand children’s awareness of their own community.
Educational Field Trip plays a vital role in the school curriculum, which serves a wide range of benefits in several ways including learning and teaching. One of them is that they help students to learn through authentic experience and can be an interesting way to explore new things for both the learners and teachers. This is the reason why students should encourage to engage in field trips which are significant for students.
In Tamale most schools either do not engage students in field trips or even when they do, needy students are usually left out because they can afford the fees for the trip, which is mostly outside the region.
Well over the last few months Sanatu Zambang news team have been able to scout out some interesting and intriguing sites where students can learn, have ample opportunity to witness new things, learn about new environments at their own pace and immerse themselves in an authentic experience, without having to the anxiety of homework, exams or tests.
Nkrumah Volini
To those who were born in the 1970s, 1980s and the 90s, in Tamale, the story of Nkrumah ‘volini’ was part of the stories told to children.
Located at Nyohini, three-hundred (300) metres away from the Abedi Pele roundabout, Nkrumah ‘volini’ has been believed by the locality to have some form of spirituality surrounding it.
As a very old structure, Nkrumah ‘volini’ is a habitat to some owls, pythons, vampire bats, and other few creatures. The pythons are said to be spiritually inclined to the place, since the locality in which it is situated (Nyohini) consider their land god to be a python.
On rare occasions, people have come across a very big python there, which has been considered as a god. Sometimes, some snakes are seen with ring(s) around their tail ends. This even intensifies their spiritual thoughts about the building.
People often said those days that, Dr, Kwame Nkrumah had built the place as a safe house – and that, it was connected to all regions of Ghana. According to the myths told, Nkrumah had envision times of wars and by way of protecting Ghanaians, he built it as a secret passage through the underground to the ocean.
Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA)
Conceived as a studio space for artists, it has since expanded to become a hub for research and local engagement, with a programme of artists’ residencies and exhibitions spanning SCCA and its sister institution, the nearby Red Clay.
Last year, the center staged a retrospective dedicated to the Ghanaian modernist and self-described ‘Afro-Journalist’ Kofi Dawson; currently on view is a survey of work by the artist and dramatist Agyeman Ossei, ‘Dota’. SCCA is affiliated with blaxTARLINES KUMASI, an experimental art institution based at Mahama’s alma mater, the department of painting and sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana’s second city.
The Akutia art exhibition is a retrospective of the life’s work of Agyeman Osei (Dota). Engrossed in arts, the artiste’s style of work includes translating Akan proverbs, idioms, legends, myths, etc. into paintings, theatre plays, animations, and sculptures.
He literally embeds his thought in these literary arts as a means of communicating.
Redclay Studios
At the Redclay centre in Jana Kpeng, the centre has created space to teach children. The Redclay use their experimental aircrafts as classrooms to teach. This, the founder explained will create a motivating environment for the children.
One of the children who has shown keen interest in this training is Abdul-Latif; son of the Assemblymember of the locality where Redclay is situated.
Within few training sessions with Ibrahim Mahama, he is flying drones and also teaching his colleagues in the area. Abdul-Latif has also learned to take photos with the camera and does that passionately.
The drone practice with his community mates happens to like their usual playgrounds. They play with it at Redclay like playing with sand.
The next sites may be outside Tamale, but they are still within the Northern Region and they are historical sites of great importance. Taking students into a new as well as unfamiliar environment provides them with an amazing experience of traveling with peers and sharing responsibilities. Most importantly, the educational trip provides valuable lessons away from the classroom, without using textbooks and other tools used in a normal school curriculum.
To be more precise, if students have a chance to visit the science center or historical museum, they will be excited to learn these subjects with authentic experience by seeing the historic events from his own eyes. Not only that, during the course of the journey, students can save unforgettable memories in their student life which is indispensable to anyone. No matter what memory is, it definitely becomes a necessary part of your student life simply because it gives them ample opportunity to learn from their own experiences and from the experience of others
German Cemetery in Yendi: Resting Place of the Warriors of Adibo Battle
The Adibo community, which is sited on the Yendi-Bimbilla in the village where the Germans first came into contact with the Dagomba forces at the Battle of Adibo, till date, according to some residents, traces of the war are still very visible at the specific place of the battle and somewhat sacred now. This historical area could be developed to become a tourist site.
At the time the king who reigned was Ya Na Andani II (popularly called Andan Naanigoo) and he said that his kingdom, Dagbon, would not be taken over by the white-man and that he would protect it at all cost.
But his kingdom was threatened by the Europeans from all directions – from the south by the Germans, from the West by the British and from the North by the French. In all Dagbon resisted colonialism for several years.
Following their resistance against foreign authority, on 3rd December 1896, the Dagbamba tribesmen met and launched an attack on the heavily armed German Schutztruppe and Askari paramilitary police accompanying the Lieutenant Valentin von Massow on his way to their capital at the village of Adibo, who had been sent by the German colonial administration to quell the rebellion.
The Battle of Adibo fell on a Friday, a Yendi market day; and market days that fall on Fridays are special and attended in a grand style even up to this day. These market days are called Alizumma-koofe in the local parlance, because in the olden days young women decorated themselves beautifully with koofe (a kind of beads) around their waists to show to young men at the market.
The battle of Adibo is remembered in Dagbang as a solemn occasion, the Ya Na stays indoors and must not appear in public on any market day that falls on a Friday (Alizumma koofe).
Photography by Next Pixel images 
Art by 18yr old Jamal Bamba
Yong Duuni community
The Tatale hills, the Yong Duuni community, where the adventurous Yaa Naa Nyagsi, son of Naa Shitobu and grandson of Naa Gbewaa died after killing the Tendana of Namogu in 1432. It was while at Yogu that Naa Nyagse built Yani Dabari where he died in 1432. His tomb to date still exists.
Yendi Gbewaa Palace
The centuries-old Naa Gbewaa Palace in yendi, built between 1554 and 1570 AD by Yaa Naa Luro. The Gbewaa Palace is the seat of the King of Dagbon and has stood since the mid-1500s, even though it was burnt down by the Germans in the Battle of Adibo in 1896.
The German Schutztruppe and Askari paramilitary police led by the Lieutenant Valentin von Massow burnt down the Palace and the entire Yendi village after the Battle of Adibo on December 4, 1896. However, the Palace was later built again by Yaa Naa Alassani in 1899 and it has since stood.
The photograph depicts Ya Na, paramount chief of Dagomba, Northern Region, Ghana, on a state visit to the Asantehene Opoku Ware II. Ya Na wears prestige cloth made of leather and fur amulets containing writings of the Koran. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for Westinghouse Film and traveled to Africa from October 26, 1970 to end of March 1971. 
Bagli Community
Bagli, now a farming community in the Karaga District. Sitobu subsequently settled briefly at Gambaga before moving south to Namburugu, near Karaga, where he founded the modern Dagbon state.
In this community lies the tomb of Yaa Naa Shitobu, the founder of the Dagbon Kingdom who according to Dagbon historians died in 1414. His tomb has become a shrine where the Chief of the area, the Bagli Tindana guards. An age-long practice of serving the tomb supper is still practiced even today.
