Skills

Quick review of Monday's catechism. Who is God? One God in three divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the central mystery of our faith. Today we pray as the Church always prays, in the name of the Trinity. Make the Sign of the Cross slowly and deliberately, then pray the Glory Be ('Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit...'), the simplest and oldest Trinitarian prayer of praise.

Verbs often work in teams. THE RULE: A helping (auxiliary) verb works in front of a main verb to form a verb phrase, adding meaning about time, possibility, or completion. The most common helpers are forms of be, have, and do (is, are, was, has, had, will, would, can, could, should, must). Example: in 'The wall was being built,' the verb phrase is 'was being built' (helpers 'was being' + main verb 'built'). Helping verbs also let us form the two VOICES. In the active voice, the subject does the action: 'The emperor built the wall.' In the passive voice, the subject receives the action, and a helping verb (a form of 'be') plus the main verb is used: 'The wall was built by the emperor.' Good writers usually prefer the active voice because it is clearer, stronger, and shorter — but the passive is useful when the doer is unknown or unimportant ('The terracotta army was discovered in 1974'). WORKED EXAMPLE: 'Confucius has been admired for centuries.' — verb phrase 'has been admired,' passive voice. PRACTICE — underline the full verb phrase, then label each sentence active or passive: (1) The army was discovered by farmers. (2) Confucius taught his students. (3) The Silk Road had connected distant lands. (4) Great walls were built by the Qin. (5) The Buddha was seeking peace.

Asia is the largest continent, and its geography explains its history. Two giant civilizations grew up walled off from each other and from the West by some of the most formidable barriers on earth. The Indian subcontinent is shaped like a great diamond hanging from the mainland, fenced off to the north by the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world, which block the cold and catch the monsoon rains. India's life flowed along two river systems: the Indus (in modern Pakistan, home of the first cities) and the sacred Ganges. To the northeast lies CHINA, whose civilization grew along two great rivers flowing west to east: the Yellow River (Huang He) in the north, the cradle of Chinese civilization, and the longer Yangtze to the south. Between India and China rise the Himalayas and the high Tibetan Plateau, so the two giants traded and traveled mostly around, not over, these walls. The most famous route was the Silk Road, not a single road but a web of caravan routes running from the Chinese capital westward through the deserts and oases of Central Asia, past the Himalayas, into Persia and on toward the Mediterranean — carrying silk, spices, ideas, and eventually religions in both directions. TODAY'S DRAWING TASK: On a blank outline of Asia, draw and label the Himalayas, the Indus and Ganges rivers (India), the Yellow and Yangtze rivers (China), the Indian Ocean, and sketch the rough line of the Silk Road from China westward.

Skills day gave you the difference between active and passive voice (prefer active for strong writing) and the map of Asia's two great river civilizations, joined by the Silk Road across the world's highest mountains.