Jacob and Esau: Reading
I read out the lesson about Jacob and Esau from the Mystery of History text book, and we also read around the subject using the family Bible. Honestly, the Family Bible is one of the best books I own for giving the reader lots of extraneous information helping them to understand the context of each Biblical story:
Jacob and Esau: Writing
I made a character study note page and a Jacob’s Ladder note page:
Which the girls filled in, after we had done a character study on each of the brothers:
I asked them to write all the things which bring us closer to God on the rungs of the ladder:
Jacob and Esau: Doll’s Dress-up
This wasn’t so much dress-up as adding some fur to Jacob’s existing costume, just as his mother did in the story to deceive his father:
Jacob and Esau: Lentil Stew
It is a well known fact that Esau sold his birth-rite for some lentil stew. This doesn’t seem at all sensible to me. Chocolate? Maybe… Coffee? Definitely… But lentil stew? Really? It is a little known fact that I hate any kind of pulse and that includes lentils, so yuck!
But in the desire to give my children an authentic educational experience I did make a lentil stew of sorts. And by that I mean it did have some lentils in it. But I’m thinking it was more a lentil soup as in order for me to be able to eat it, I had to puree it first. It’s not the lentil taste I dislike but the lentil texture – it makes me gag – so I pureed it:
Jacob and Esau – Can you tell who is who?
This activity was borne from a throw away comment by Abigail. Abigail really struggled to imagine a scenario that she would not be able to tell the people she loved apart, because ‘surely a father would know his own son?’
Handily, I have a set of my own twins to test the truth of her statement. So we covered up the littles eyes, whilst the twins plotted to exchange recognisable features in an attempt to confuse their younger sisters:
They wore hats because their hair is so different; Charlotte has very long nails so they both made a fist of their hands to conceal their nails; Charlotte wore Lillie’s glasses and they exchanged jewellery. How would the little ones fair?
Becca went first and as soon as she felt the glasses she squealed that that one was Lillie (just as an aside – the picture above where Charlotte is the one wearing the glasses, looks SO MUCH like Lillie, I think I would have struggled!). She checked their arms for jewellery, and that made up her mind. Lillie in the back and Charlotte in the front (of the photo). Then Abs had a turn:
She came to the same conclusion! The ruse was successful!
This was a great lesson on deceit. They all hugged it out, which of course I had to include because, well, I love me a good bear hug!
Good learning, good fun and good times!