Chapter 11 – Chaos in the Market Place
Questions to think about and discuss
1. What actions gave Nathan an opportunity to speak about Jesus to the merchants? How can we use kindness and helpfulness to open up opportunities to tell others about Jesus?
2. What made Nathan so bold that he witnessed to a seller of idols and a gang of teen-agers? Do you know someone who boldly tells people about Jesus?
Activities
1.. The children saw jugglers performing in the Antioch market place. Find a book on juggling and practice juggling. You can begin with handkerchiefs or scarves and progress to bean bags or hacky sacks. Start with two and then do three objects.
2. Find some things made of real silk from silk worm cocoons.
3. Google: “The Life Cycle of a silkworm” and watch how silkworms grow and spin cocoons. There are also good books on this.
4. If you have a mulberry tree you can raise your own silkworms. You can buy 25 eggs at insectlore.com. The tiny eggs take a week or more to hatch. Keep them in a box such as a shoe box. The new silkworms will look like tiny, moving pieces of black thread!
Take mulberry leaves, wash and dry them, and lay a few on top of the newly hatched silk worms. Be sure they have a constant supply of leaves (only mulberry will do.) As the worms grow, they will turn white and you will be able to see them more easily. When discarding dried, shriveled leaves, be careful not to discard the worms!
When they are bigger, you may hold them gently. As they grow, you will have more and more worm “poop” to remove from the box. Don’t worry – it doesn’t smell. The easiest way to do this is to take the mulberry branch (the silkworms will be holding on) and remove it. Dump out the box, return the silk worms to the box and add fresh mulberry leaves. As long as the silkworms have food, they will not crawl out of the box..
After 5 or 6 weeks, the caterpillars will stop their constant eating and begin to spin silk cocoons, which harden. Then begins the wait for the moths to hatch. Silk is harvested by soaking the cocoons in hot water, unwinding the thin thread and twisting the threads together to make thread that can be dyed and woven. (The life of the moth is sacrificed because when the moth hatches the silk threads are broken.) Those that are allowed to hatch will mate and lay eggs. These can actually be kept in a refrigerator and taken out the following year when the mulberry trees begin to get their leaves.
5. Have you eaten a pomegranate? If not, get one at the grocery store. You eat the seeds and the fruit that surrounds the seeds.
Art
Make a drawing or painting of a colorful garden in Antioch such as the children visited. What do you imagine it looked like? Don’t forget a fountain.
Research
Find out more about the Hippodrome in Antioch where the bears would perform in a circus. Use reference books or an internet search. What else might you use see if you went to the Hippodrome in 1st Century Antioch?
Questions to think about and discuss
1. What actions gave Nathan an opportunity to speak about Jesus to the merchants? How can we use kindness and helpfulness to open up opportunities to tell others about Jesus?
2. What made Nathan so bold that he witnessed to a seller of idols and a gang of teen-agers? Do you know someone who boldly tells people about Jesus?
Activities
1.. The children saw jugglers performing in the Antioch market place. Find a book on juggling and practice juggling. You can begin with handkerchiefs or scarves and progress to bean bags or hacky sacks. Start with two and then do three objects.
2. Find some things made of real silk from silk worm cocoons.
3. Google: “The Life Cycle of a silkworm” and watch how silkworms grow and spin cocoons. There are also good books on this.
4. If you have a mulberry tree you can raise your own silkworms. You can buy 25 eggs at insectlore.com. The tiny eggs take a week or more to hatch. Keep them in a box such as a shoe box. The new silkworms will look like tiny, moving pieces of black thread!
Take mulberry leaves, wash and dry them, and lay a few on top of the newly hatched silk worms. Be sure they have a constant supply of leaves (only mulberry will do.) As the worms grow, they will turn white and you will be able to see them more easily. When discarding dried, shriveled leaves, be careful not to discard the worms!
When they are bigger, you may hold them gently. As they grow, you will have more and more worm “poop” to remove from the box. Don’t worry – it doesn’t smell. The easiest way to do this is to take the mulberry branch (the silkworms will be holding on) and remove it. Dump out the box, return the silk worms to the box and add fresh mulberry leaves. As long as the silkworms have food, they will not crawl out of the box..
After 5 or 6 weeks, the caterpillars will stop their constant eating and begin to spin silk cocoons, which harden. Then begins the wait for the moths to hatch. Silk is harvested by soaking the cocoons in hot water, unwinding the thin thread and twisting the threads together to make thread that can be dyed and woven. (The life of the moth is sacrificed because when the moth hatches the silk threads are broken.) Those that are allowed to hatch will mate and lay eggs. These can actually be kept in a refrigerator and taken out the following year when the mulberry trees begin to get their leaves.
5. Have you eaten a pomegranate? If not, get one at the grocery store. You eat the seeds and the fruit that surrounds the seeds.
Art
Make a drawing or painting of a colorful garden in Antioch such as the children visited. What do you imagine it looked like? Don’t forget a fountain.
Research
Find out more about the Hippodrome in Antioch where the bears would perform in a circus. Use reference books or an internet search. What else might you use see if you went to the Hippodrome in 1st Century Antioch?