Finished ETC 2, and more SotW lessons

Today Sayer completed the last 4 pages in ETC 2 and took the test. She caught herself in the test after she made a spelling error and erased it and re-wrote it. Her only other error was managing to write Brad as drab. Oops!

Her handwriting needs real work. She complains mightily when I bring out the practice books that you can write on and erase. And the pages of ETC that require the most writing are the ones she stalls and dawdles and takes *forever* to complete. But she NEEDS practice.

Tomorrow after swim class we'll see about starting ETC 2 1/2 while Duncan is in gymnastics. If he decides to stay in class. Last week he decided he was too tired to participate after opening circle. But if he stays in class, we'll either start ETC 2 1/2 or she'll read to me or I'll read to her ... she's still enthralled with myth stories :)

We also read about Hammurabi's Code today after doing another review of the previous chapters in SotW. In the review after we went over nomads and farming and Egypt and Mesopotamia and writing and mummies and empires we got to the story of Terah and Abram and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and she was able to give lots of details. 'The brothers of Joseph were jealous and he was his father's favorite and his father made him a special coat and his brothers killed a goat and put it's blood on the shirt and told a lie to their father that Joseph was dead. They put him in a crack then some people came and they gave him to them and he went to Egypt.' I filled in a bit about Joseph working for Potiphar, the captain of the guard and how the angry wife of the captain told lies about Joseph so that Potiphar put Joseph in prison, then I asked Sayer what happened to him there and she picked right back up with the narrative. 'Another slave had a dream and Joseph told him what it meant and he was right and the Pharaoh had a dream and Joseph told what it meant. The Pharoah dreamed of seven fat cows eating grass then seven thin cows came out of the water and ATE the fat cows! And it meant that there would be seven years of good food, and then seven years of bad food. And then Joseph's brothers came asking for food and they didn't recognize him, but he recognized them! And he said they could have food and he forgave them and told them to bring his father and their families to live in Egypt.' Did I mention that she liked this story enough to ask me to re-read her history lesson last week? :)

And so, after that narration we read about Hammurabi, who was the king of Babylon and who conquered other city-states or convinced them to become vassals, and who wrote a set of laws to govern everyone fairly. We went over some of the laws in the code and decided that many were fair, but others we were less sure of. We're going to read it again tomorrow, and do the activities and crafts and other readings over the next few days.