Upcoming Events:
Wednesday Sept. 30th- Friday Oct. 2nd – Angelic Organics Field Trip
Saturday Oct. 3rd – Michaelmas Festival at City Garden 11:00
Again a friendly reminder: the 3rd grade is the village; this means the children should wear clothing associated with the following:
•farmers
•fishers (gordon fisher costume?)
•cobblers
•builders
•bakers (anyone have a chef hat?)
•mothers (a dress, head scarf, and apron would be great)
•woodsman
Morning Lesson:
“Leave your country, your kin, and your father’s house, and go to a country that I will show you. I shall make you into a great nation.” Genesis 12:1-2
This past week, we focused on the story of Abraham. It all begins when a descendant of Noah, Terah moves his wife and sons from the city of Ur north to Haran where he can farm and tend sheep. When Terah passes away, the eldest son Abram inherits his father’s land and wealth. It is then Abram is told by God to leave all he has known behind and head toward the land of Canaan. This is when Abram’s journey truly begins. The land promised to Abram becomes stricken with famine. He is forced to take his family to Egypt where he observes a great civilization and the complexities of government, beliefs, farming, building, and rituals. In time, he is able to return to Canaan with his wife Sarai and nephew Lot. It soon becomes clear that there is not enough pasture for both Lot’s and Abram’s sheep. Lot moves his family to the fertile plains of the Jordan River near the city of Sodom. War breaks out in the cities near the Dead Sea and Lot is captured. Abram and a group of 318 shepherds manage to rescue and save many of the captives. Abram keeps neither rewards nor riches for his heroic actions; God again make him a promise to reward him. By this time all Abram can think of is having a child, an heir to his wealth. It is at this point that God renames Abram to Abraham “father of many nations”. In time, with lots of patience, Abraham and Sarah find extreme happiness in their son Isaac. Of course, the story is more complex then they lived happily ever after.
Abraham’s story is perpetually looking toward the future. The work the children do today is to prepare them for their future. Just like in Abraham’s time, the world we live in is flawed, but within this imperfect place, we are capable of worthy achievements. The world is in a constant struggle between good and evil, light and shadow; the same struggle that is being waged within ourselves. This is the lesson of Abraham — the ability to let your inner light guide you through difficult times. When children realize this as a possibility, they can become much more comfortable in their new reality. They will one day find their ‘promised land’ and be at home in their body upon the earth while guided by the Self, the ego. As they encounter this promised land as a nine year old, they see that it is stricken by a famine of sorts; it has been uninhabited until now. So like Abraham, they seek refuge and look out into the world for sustenance and an example of how to survive. It is a great place to be as the children approach their first hands on experience of building a shelter— the tipi.
Language Arts Work:
In addition to organizing words into alphabetical order, the class worked with sentence structure. This came two ways: from our of our review of nouns and verbs and from a story about a mason named nincompoop who did not know how to properly use mortar and bricks. In fact, he didn’t use mortar at all and therefore his wall was incomplete and structurally weak. After some guidance from wise masons, he learned that you must use mortar. Well lets just say nincompoop had a few more mishaps. In the end, a beautifully formed wall was made of mortar and bricks. The children then made bricks of their own and were told to write nouns on them from the stories they heard. But without mortar (or in this case verbs) the row was incomplete. The metaphor of course being: a sentence without a verb is like a row of bricks without mortar—incomplete. The children will continue to work with the image of a mason as they further develop their writing skills. They had fun with this activity— they noticed that sentences contain words that were neither verbs nor nouns. Something we will dive into in the future.
Math Facts for this week:
8+5, 7+6, 11-9, 12-9, 13-9
Spelling Words:
- surname
- turn
- turnip
- burn
- fur
- purr
- occur
- sulfur
- curl
- hurl
- our