Jacob and Esau

First of all, I apologize for taking a break from posting. Life has been rather busy, especially school. The class and I have spent the past week seeing how many things we can cram into one day. The realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon has definitely occurred to me, as we are now getting to the point in the year where we get to see how many activities we get to add to our day. This is partly my fault with overbooking myself to do many things in one day. For example, Monday I scheduled myself for a belated Mole Day celebration, conference, Spelling Bee club, and an after school meeting, which actually was over shortly after I arrived.

Today we began studying Jacob and Esau, this is one of my favorite chapters to cover in Religion. To begin our new chapter, I began by talking to the students about their own families and the order of the children in their families. I decided to pick one child and have them name all the children in their family. I then told the children that many years ago, that the oldest son would inherit the families belongings and so we talked about who would inherit the family's wealth. We then also talked about a family that had all daughters and the rule of marriage, typically the oldest daughter needed to get married before the younger daughters, which we would concentrate more about later in the week.

My students could not believe it, why would parents give everything to just one child? We then discussed how this is not a typical custom for many families today. I used the example of my family, where my parents hope is to split everything evenly between my siblings and I.

Agnes then asks, "What did they do in the case of twin boys?"

"That is a great question, Agnes. We are going to read about that right now."

We begin reading our religion book, where the students learn that Jacob and Esau are in fact twin boys. Esau being the oldest and Jacob the youngest. We go on to read how Esau is willing to give away his birthright to Jacob over food. We end up stopping at this point for the children to go to music class.

"Ms. J. in third grade Mrs. A. used to read to us and she always stopped at the good parts and now you are making us stop at the good part, too." Celine tells me.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go to music, but we will read more later today besides this will give us something to look forward to."

"I really want to know what happens next." says Joseph. "Can we read ahead?"

"No, let us all find out together, then it will be a surprise."

Like most Tuesdays, after music class the pastor of the church comes to visit our class. I was so happy because often times the priest will ask the children what we are studying in class and usually only a hand or two go up to answer his question. As a teacher, you sit there and say to yourself, I know I am teaching them something. Today, many hands go up as the children were very excited with the story of Jacob and Esau.

Cronius raises his hand and asks, "Father I do not understand, why would Esau just give up his birthright for food?"

Father responds back saying, "Well, we do not know how long Esau was out hunting, maybe he didn't eat for a week, he could have been very hungry."

Father begins talking more with the children about Jacob and Esau and begins to go beyond what we have studied about the two brothers. He ends our lesson with a closing prayer. It does not take him long to leave our classroom before Ralph says, "Ms. J. you told us we could not read ahead because you wanted us to be surprised, but Father just told us something that is going to happen."

"I'm sure Father didn't realize we haven't gotten that far in our studies and everyone was so eager to find out what happened next. Now you know."

"Well, I'm just saying, it isn't a surprise anymore."

"Trust me there is more to the story that Father hasn't told you, yet."

"Like?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise."

Sometimes I do not understand children, they are so eager to know something, but get upset if you ruin the surprise by telling them information too soon. On the other hand, I am eager for tomorrow's lesson myself, where we will study about Jacob being the one tricked.