Today's Essays

Back to real life and back to school.

In English class, we are doing a Christmas unit (because that's about the time we are into 7th grade) and her assignment was to write about Christ's birth from the point of view of one of the barnyard animals that was in the stables.  She wasn't allowed to say what kind of animal it was though - she had to be descriptive enough for us to guess on our own.

All of the animals were surprised as a man, a woman, and a donkey entered the barn. It was not the people who usually fed us or took care of us. I swallowed my hay and leaned forward, sniffing the people. They smelled like dust and dirt, like they’d been outside for a while.

The donkey walked into the barn and I asked, “Why are your masters here?”

He said, “Christ will be born tonight. You and the other animals must be blessed to be allowed witness such a miracle.”

I turned my huge head to the sheep beside me. She looked equally surprised. I flicked my long mane out of my eyes and turned back to the people. Christ was born that night, as the donkey said, and the humans laid him in a manger.

I leaned down and nuzzled the baby gently. He touched my muzzle and one of the adults chuckled and stroked my neck. I heard the donkey murmur, “I am so blessed to be here.”

So, could you tell what animal she is?


In History class, she had to write an essay comparing and contrasting Egypt and Sumer.  It was really a final exam for the first term in this year.  (We just finished all of Genesis and are on lesson 60.)  These essays are really her whole grade with this curriculum, so it needed to be awesome.

The ancient Egyptians lived alongside the Nile River in villages, waiting for their river to flood and water their crops. The Nile River flooded every year for a while and then receded, back to normal until the next year. The Egyptians relied on the river to wash away the sand; if it skipped a year, the sand would be blown onto the village and the villagers would be covered in dry, red sand.

However, the desert also protected the Egyptians. The shore of the Nile was a bit—a mile or two—of farmland. After the farmland came desert, over a thousand miles of sand to the west, miles and miles of rock to the east, and the Mediterranean sea to the north and the Nile to the south. No hostile neighbors or invading armies could make it to the villages.

They were a strong nation; the Egyptians spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, and they all relied on the river. However, they never had a single government. They split into two groups; one in the North, near the Nile Delta, and one in the South, in the Nile valley. Because of the way the river flows, Lower Egypt is in the North and the South is Upper Egypt.

Like the Egyptians, the Sumerians were divided into separate groups; each city was its own kingdom with the city in the middle and farms and villages on the outside. Each city was ruled by a few of its most important people, who had meetings regularly. They chose the city’s main leader, who is called the lugal, which means “the big man.” They were kings. Unfortunately, they attacked nearby cities, since they enjoyed their power and wanted to increase that power, and the lugals didn’t understand that life would be better as one big nation. This would’ve lead to their downfall, so they needed one man to bring them all into their own empire.

The king of Kish, a large Sumerian city, was named Ur-Zubaba. He had a cupbearer named Sargon, who’d moved to the king’s court from northern Mesopotamia, a region called Akkad. He said that he was the adopted son of a gardener and didn’t know who his real father was. After he’d been serving the king for a while, one night, Sargon dreamed that he was blessed by the Sumerian goddess Inanna and that the goddess rejected the king. Ur-Zubaba heard about the dream and was afraid of it. He had Sargon send a tablet to the king of Uruk, another city, and the tablet said to kill the one who delivered it. The king of Uruk didn’t agree to do such a horrible thing, so Sargon returned perfectly healthy, much to Ur-Zubaba’s dismay.

Later, Kish was attacked by a neighboring city with a fierce, large, and terrifying army. Ur-Zubaba fled, and, with nobody else leading the army, Sargon took control of the army and went to fight the attackers off. Sargon won the battle, and returned to the city, naming himself king. Ur-Zubaba was never seen again.

After that, Sargon attacked every city until he was the lord of all of Sumer and the entire plain had to follow his commands. By now, he’d come down to the Persian Gulf and washed the weapons in saltwater as a symbol to his defeated enemies. He then built a new capital city, near Kish, and named it Agade (ah-gah-DAY). For protection against any possible rebels, Sargon kept his army close. Records boast that he had 5,400 warriors.

Sargon wasn’t content to remain in Agade. Because Sumer had low amounts of resources, the Sumerians had to rely on trading to survive, which Sargon didn’t like. He took his army north and west, along the Fertile Crescent, conquering everything in his path. He used this to make sure that his Sumerian empire would always have enough supplies.

Sargon ruled for a whole fifty-six years, and became very wealthy and very powerful. Much later, Babylonian scribes described Sargon to have no rivals, nor equals. They said themselves that he spread his kingdom across the lands and crossed the sea to the east, conquered the west, and brought it under his own rule.

Sumerians built temples with food and drinks and shelter for their gods. Priests would care for a wooden statue—which they believed was a god—and bathe it, clothe it, and serve it two huge meals a day. A clay tablet claimed that one meal for the god might include fourty sheep, eight lambs, seventy ducks, and fifty-four jugs of wine. To the Sumerians, it was necessary that the priests take good care of them.

The Sumerians believed that the gods gave them good weather and nice crops when they were happy. The people believed that the gods brought droughts and storms and enemies to the city when they were neglected or upset.

Sumerians are educated in their own sort of schools, where people learn to write. The writing is called cuneiform. In the city, it’s the most important thing. It began as picture-writing, but eventually became wedge-shaped symbols instead of pictures, because it’s more efficient to stamp out a pattern than to draw pictures in clay. Each wedge-shaped pattern is an object or idea. Cuneiform isn’t an alphabet; each shape stands for names of things. If you wanted to write the name of a town, Fish Creek, for example, you’d draw a little fish and a symbol for moving water: Fish Creek. Cuneiform worked like that—the symbols mean either an object or the object’s name. It’s so complicated that the only ones who could read and write in Sumer were kings, noblemen, and scribes, who go to school for many years to learn. It’s important, though, because it’s one of the oldest examples of writing. Archaeologists have found a lot of cuneiform, since it can survive so long; clay can last through fire, floods, and being buried in sand.

I thought she did a wonderful job.  All of the facts are in there and it's in her own words.  Grammatically it looks good.  Maybe it could have been a smidge more organized, but for 7th grade, I'd call it an A+.