Skills

Quick review of Monday's catechism. How does the one Creator God make himself known to us? Answer: he reveals himself, gradually through salvation history and fully in Jesus Christ, and this revelation reaches us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Turn it into prayer: thank God that he did not leave us guessing about him but spoke to us, and ask for faith to receive his Word.

This week we deepen our study of the noun and meet the pronoun. THE RULE: Nouns come in kinds. A common noun names any member of a group (river, king, city); a proper noun names a specific one and is capitalized (Nile, Ramesses, Memphis). A concrete noun names something you can sense (pyramid, scribe); an abstract noun names an idea you cannot touch (justice, eternity). A collective noun names a group as one unit (army, family, council). A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun so we don't repeat it; the noun it stands for is its antecedent. WORKED EXAMPLE 1: 'Ramesses built monuments because he wanted to be remembered.' — 'he' is a pronoun whose antecedent is the proper noun 'Ramesses.' WORKED EXAMPLE 2: 'The army crossed the desert; it carried its own water.' — 'army' is a collective noun; 'it' and 'its' are pronouns referring to it. PRACTICE — for each sentence, list the nouns and label each as common or proper, and underline any pronoun: (1) Pharaoh Khufu ordered the Great Pyramid at Giza. (2) The priests believed in justice and eternity. (3) Nefertiti was beautiful, and she became famous. (4) The crew built the tomb; they finished it in years. (5) Egypt and its people honored the Nile.

Egypt's geography contains a delightful puzzle: Upper Egypt is in the SOUTH and Lower Egypt is in the NORTH. The reason is the river. The Nile is one of the only major rivers on earth that flows northward, from the highlands of East Africa down to the Mediterranean. 'Upper' and 'Lower' refer to elevation and the river's flow, not the map — Upper Egypt is upriver (south, higher), Lower Egypt is downriver (north, where the river fans into the marshy delta before the sea). On either side of the green Nile valley lies the Eastern (Arabian) Desert toward the Red Sea, and the vast Western (Libyan/Sahara) Desert. These deserts were natural walls that protected Egypt from invasion for long stretches and kept its culture remarkably continuous. The whole nation was essentially one long oasis a few miles wide. TODAY'S DRAWING TASK: On a blank outline of Egypt, draw the Nile flowing from south to north, sketch and shade the triangular delta where it meets the Mediterranean, label Upper Egypt (south) and Lower Egypt (north), shade the Eastern and Western Deserts, and mark the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the city of Memphis near the delta and Thebes upriver.

Skills day gave you two tools: you sorted nouns into kinds and met the pronoun, and you drew the only great river that flows north. Both reward careful attention to detail.