Making Acorn Flour

A few days ago, D took the girls on a hike and they gathered acorns. He hasn't had a chance to prepare them yet, so the girls and I did it today. We shelled them, ground them into flour, rinsed it to get all of the tannic acid off, and now the flour is drying. We're going to use it in our pancakes tomorrow. We are all really glad we don't have to prepare them like the Native Americans used to. It's a lot easier with a food processor than it would be with a mortar and pestle! 

Picture from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Acorn-Flour

 
This led to discussing a lot of different things while we shelled the acorns.  We talked about where our ancestors came from (England, France, Italy, Ireland and many other places), and I showed them on the globe.  We talked about how there were already people living here when our ancestors came.  While discussing how they wouldn't be able to just go to the store to buy food, but that grinding acorns like this would be a matter of either having food or not, we talked about other things they ate, like fish and deer.  E mentioned that sometimes hunting deer is illegal, which led to talking about government, and how there was no government then to say that hunting was illegal.  We talked about what the Native Americans wore, and looked up pictures of their clothes.  Then I told them that we see Native Americans every time we leave the house (there is a Rancheria in our town), and that they don't wear the traditional clothes very often anymore, but dress and look just like us.  

A few days ago, we got the movie Hercules at the library. I thought it was going to be like the Disney cartoon, which is mostly about Hercules' life on earth and his antics with a silly side kick. It turned out to be VERY much about him trying to become a god and the gods controlling things happening on earth and arguing about what to do with him. I made a few comments as we watched it, but I was also busy with other things. So tonight, E wanted to watch it again. I said yes, but that first we needed to talk about the beliefs portrayed in the movie.

I showed her Greece on the globe and told her that some people believed that there were many gods who acted the way the gods act in the movie, but that there is really only one God. While talking about that, I mentioned that Greece used to be a lot bigger than what we see on the globe. She asked questions about that and I told her about the Greeks and the Romans having large empires. I showed her how the country that we now call America used to belong to various other countries. The globe has a little picture of Columbus on it and she asked about that, so I told her about Columbus trying to find India and finding America instead.

Besides this being a chance to talk about different religions and it leading to other ideas and facts, the movie was also a great representation of Greek thought and reminded me just how different it is from Hebraic thought. Many of the modern church's ideas about God, how he treats us, and how we should relate to each other, come from Greek thought, because the church tried to eliminate anything that looked Jewish. They forbade the Messianic Jews and Torah Observant non-Jews to celebrate the feasts and festivals, killed Jews who refused to eat pork and changed the observance of the sabbath to Sunday. Then they mixed Christianity with pagan practices like Christmas and Easter. To top it off, the American government system is based somewhat on the Roman Republic. So the typical American Christian is brought up, in church and in culture, with a Greek-type mindset, thought patterns, beliefs and priorities.

SO MANY thing are affected by this! For example, many of the beliefs that the church holds about women and children are derived from the teachings of Augustine, who had help interpreting the Bible from Plato (a misogynist and not even a Christian). This is where some churches get such beliefs as babies being born evil little sinners, women being made in the image of man (not God), etc. In ancient Judaism, children were not accountable for their own sins until the age of 20 and women were equals to men.

One thing that was brought up several times in the movie was "head over heart" and "never let your heart rule, always be ruled by your head." This is so VERY Greek! From this thought the church derived stereotypes about men being ruled by their heads and women being ruled by their hearts, thus the belief that men are more fit to lead because women are too "emotional." Ancient Judaism teaches that the heart rules the body, not the head, but they do not extrapolate this to mean that the woman should rule over the man, but rather that they should work together in Echad, because in Hebraic thought, all things are circular. This circular thought means that all things are connected, intertwined, come from one another and answers lead into questions. This is in direct contrast to Greek thought, which is linear and must have hierarchy and definite answers. This is where the church gets the linear hierarchy of God, Jesus, man, woman, child, dog. Ancient Judaism focuses Echad, which is plural unity. When combined with the teachings of Jesus and Paul, we get a beautiful picture of the unity of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the unity of husband and wife.

Greek thought also affects beliefs about hell. If you just read the words of the Bible, it doesn't say much about the afterlife. Most of the places that have the English word "hell" have the Hebrew or Greek word for grave and if you read the context, it is often obviously talking about physical death. The concept of hell and the devil comes from Greek beliefs about Hades and the gods of the underworld. Modern Christian thought about the afterlife much more closely resembles Greek mythology than Ancient Judaism.


The difference in Greek and Hebraic thought makes such a difference when reading the Bible! I strongly recommend learning about Hebraic thought and reading the Bible through that lens. After all, this is the thought pattern of the authors of the Bible, the thought pattern that God spoke to them through, the thought pattern that Jesus and Paul and the other NT authors had when they referred back to "the Scriptures" and the only scriptures they had to refer to was the Old Testament!

Flowing Days

Every day is full of lots of questions and answers and learning, but some days the connections just really seem to flow and the conversations are so interesting. On these days I seem to have no shortage of ideas and they seem to have no shortage of curiosity. The last few days have been those kinds of days.


E and I talked about caves, caverns and catacombs and I looked up videos of them today.

The first thing L did when she woke up was to point to each finger on one hand and count 1,2,3,4,5 and then the other hand 1,2,3,4,5,6 (she's missing one apparently! lol) I haven't done any counting with her AT ALL just for the sake of counting, but we play lots of hide and seek and we count things in real life that need counting.

We bought some new pets- two little mice- and talked about what they eat and how to take care of them.

On the way to the pet store E was saying she could read some things, like her name, but not everything. I told her that once she knew the sounds of the letters and could put them together, she could read anything (which I know totally isn't true because of the way English spelling works, but kind of). As we pulled up to the store, she pointed out the words on the front of Office Max and Winco and Petsmart. I helped her sound out Petsmart. Then she wanted to know how to spell "shirt" and wanted it written down. I didn't have a pen or paper, but I promised to show her later which I did.

I forget what brought this up, but E told me that she wanted to go to Kansas. I asked her what was in Kansas that she wanted to see and she said lions and giraffes. I told her those would be in Africa, but she still really wanted to go Kansas. She was also quite sure we could walk there. I showed her on google maps where Kansas and Africa are in relation to where we are. Then she had lots of fun playing with the markers on the map and moving them around. I named a bunch of states and countries for her and we talked about where she was born and where a lot of our family lives.

Today she was asking how cars are made and wanted to know what a cement truck was doing when we saw it driving down the road. I answered her questions as best I could, but also offered to look up a video for her. I found an episode of How It's Made that shows how cars are made, so we will probably watch that tomorrow.

There are SO MANY questions and answers and little snippets of conversations throughout the day that I wish I could remember! I know we talked about penguins, the arctic, dogs, unicorns, and so many other things I can't even keep track.

In the last few days we have also gone swimming, to a babywearing meeting, for a walk, and ran all the typical errands like the grocery store and post office. All these things can be so mundane OR they can be exciting opportunities for discovery. We like to make them the later! D also made a ginger bread house with the girls last night and I made play dough for them tonight.