More on Moses

William Brassey paining Monkey chose for his
Book of Centuries entry on Moses.

We're still working on the Moses lapbook. (More parts of our Moses lapbook are here and here.) It's been a wonderful thing to spend this time studying Moses. This is the most closely I have ever studied the Exodus, and it's a fascinating story. I'm learning and realizing all sorts of new things. For instance, as we were talking about the plagues this morning, I realized how sharply the Lord distinguished between those who believe (even Egyptians-see the hail storm) and those who didn't. And that is comforting, particularly in light of the prophecies of the judgments we can expect in the last days.

 Another cool insight comes from this post, Athletes with Shuffling Feet.  They also have an awesome picture of the sea parting that I'd love to use in my lapbook, but I have no idea what the copyright status is on that, so I'm still looking. {sigh}

We're at the point of looking at the crossing of the Red Sea now, and again, Heart of Wisdom has some great resources. I've already printed out their minibook. I'm also planning to do some with looking at how the parting of the Red Sea is a classic example of how we get revelation. I spent some time studying that a few years ago, as I was spending time looking at Doctrine and Covenants 8:2-3. Jeffrey R. Holland gave a great talk about it in BYU Devotional, called "Cast Not Away Therefore Thy Confidence." One of my favorites. I've come back to that talk several times from a couple of different angles, and now I'm going to share part of it with my Monkey.

From Brother Holland:

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Why would the Lord use the example of crossing the Red Sea as the classic example of “the spirit of revelation”? Why didn’t He use the First Vision? Or the example from the book of Moses we just used? Or the vision of the brother of Jared? Well, He could have used any of these, but He didn’t. Here He had another purpose in mind.

Usually we think of revelation as a downpour of information. But this is too narrow a concept of revelation. May I suggest how section 8 broadens our understanding, particularly in light of these “fights of affliction” we have been discussing.

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He goes on to identify some thngs we can learn about revelation from the Red Sea crossing:

1. The process usually starts with a question, often an urgent one.
2. Fear is destructive. Don't fear. Go forward.
3. God will help us; trust Him.

We're going to do a minibook for this.

Cut out and fold on the lines to make an accordion book.

Not too long ago, the kids had a lesson on the Sermon on the Mount, and the sister who was teaching did a great job of explaining what it is to "hunger and thirst for righteousness." Since then, that idea has come up several times, and in several ways. Tomorrow, we'll be looking at it from a Christ as the Bread of Life angle as we learn about the manna from heaven. Monkey caught me looking at a relatively complicated idea for a "squash book," and he liked it and wants to do it, so I guess that's what we'll do. I was watching this video clip:






And these are the elements that I came up with for building the book:

Print on cardstock and cut out. Assemble with video's instructions.

 Here is the template for the squashing pages. To do one the size of the video, you'll need 3, though the last one you'll probably want to glue on there upside down, and the "glue area" ought to show where to glue the thing to your lapbook. Also, note that the "glue area" is slightly smaller than half, so it won't show. That also means it can't be used to guide your folds. We'll be printing the cover on cardstock, and the pages on regular printer paper. I do not plan to do the chipboard cover, just glue the over on as-is.

For the inside, this is what we'll be studying:

• The story of the manna, as outlined in Exodus 16.
• Christ as the Bread of Life, as outlined in John 6:31-35.  And, actually, a whole lot of this chapter is relevent.
• How do we "eat" the Bread of Life? (Sacrament, writing the law in our hearts, obedience...)
• How important is it that we eat? What does comparing the Lord to bread teach us?

Here are some articles that I've enjoyed reading, though it's too much material to give it all to Monkey right now:
Recognizing God's Hand in our Daily Blessings - D. Todd Christopherson
Discourse by George A. Smith
Teaching of Jesus by Dallin H. Oaks

Cut on the black line; fold in half. Write inside.

Finally, this is the last one for today: the story of the battle with Amalek, where Aaron and Hur hold up Moses's hands (Exodus 17). I think that for this one, we'll just tell the story, and I'll follow Monkey's lead as to how far to take it in applying it to our lives. Moses has a lot of cool stories, and I want to tell a bunch of them before we move on, but there'll be plenty of days, when he's a little older, to explore more of the applications for this one, I think.

Incidentally, there are a lot of amazing paintings depicting the events of Moses's life. I found quite a few of them here. I'm thinking that we'll put several into our art books next week. It'll be a nice review of some of the stories.