First taste of the Bible

Today we reviewed several chapters from SotW. We quickly passed over what history is and how historians and archaeologists study it. We talked again about nomads and why they traveled and what they ate and what they would need to do and learn if they wanted to settle in one place. We discussed irrigation using canals and shadufs and the flooding of the Nile. Again we talked about Upper and Lower Egypt and how King Narmer united them and wore a double crown and became the first Pharaoh. We remembered how the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians had been the first civilizations to develop writing, and discussed the types of writing and materials they used. Then we reviewed pharaohs and mummies and pyramids and a bit about the Egyptian myth stories.

Whew! But that review got us up to our current lessons on Sargon the Great uniting the city-states of Mesopotamia and how Abram's family moved from Ur to Haran after Sargon's death because they feared war as the empire crumbled. And how Abram followed the directives of his god to leave Haran and take his family to Canaan, how his name was changed to Abraham and his wife's name to Sarah, and how they had a child, Isaac, in their old age - as had been promised by god.

The history lessons gloss right over Isaac's life, and his son, Jacob's life, as well. It jumps right to Joseph and his splendid coat and his envious brothers, and how he was sold into slavery in Egypt and eventually became second only to Pharaoh in ruling the country, and how he forgave his brothers when they came to Egypt begging for food many years later.

Sayer enjoyed the story of Joseph immensely. After we'd left off of reading and moved to do some of the more craft-oriented activities associated with the two lessons, she asked if we could read it again. I'd recently picked up a copy of the Children's Bible, so I suggested that we read the story from there instead.

I made a mistake in trying to read too much of Joseph's history to her. She specifically wanted only the story of his coat and his time in Egypt, but when I sat down with her I thought maybe we'd start with the same place we'd started in the history lesson - with Abram. And as I read I realized how much the history lesson had left out by glossing over Isaac's and Jacob's lives. But in reading to Sayer about Jacob and Esau I exhausted her patience before even getting to Joseph. So I skipped ahead and read about the coat and the dream he interpreted for Pharaoh, but she was done before we got to the bit about his family coming to Egypt during the famine.

She does want to know more, but she was just done for now. So we'll be back to this, again and again, I've no doubt. :)

We also did two of the craft activities - we made a Sumerian seal where Sayer rolled out the clay and drew/carved decorations on it. We're still waiting for it to be fully dry so we can ink it and stamp it and see how it looks. We also took a men's red button down shirt that I'd picked up at Goodwill for a deconstruction project and decided to use it as the basis for re-creating Joseph's colorful coat. I pulled out some washable glitter paints and gave the kids paint brushes and told them to paint stripes all over the back of the shirt. They got bored with stripes after a while and I decided the pattern didn't really matter, so I told them to add hearts and polka dots and birds and pickles and whatever they wanted. So now we have a very-large-glittery-stripey-painted shirt/coat of many colors. :)

Oh, and she also did 5 pages of ETC 2 :)