Seventh graders have thus far visited a synagogue, mosque and cathedral in our study of great religions. For our Christianity unit they found Renaissance paintings of the important events of Jesus's life. They also briefly learned about the Eight Beatitudes which we will be using in Ethics class and they took the "profile" art of Renaissance artist Archimboldo and turned it into an image of a "Deadly Sin". Obviously, they enjoyed doing this assignment! For Islamic art they just finished a tessellation project. In the mosque we looked for the five design devices often incorporated in Islamic sacred art: tessellations, linear pattern, Arabic sacred writing, arabesques and stellar patterns. We will next be doing a unit on Hinduism where each child will be responsible about making an image of an important Hindu deity and discussing that deity's status and attributes from Hinduism to the class.
In Ethics/Belief Systems the children are leading discussion groups and doing written work about our topics. We had a wonderful discussion about the story of Isaac and Ishmael led by Ben and Robert last week. This week the girls will be leading a discussion about Jacob and Esau. We will next start our unit about modern ethical dilemmas. Each child will choose a dilemma they wish to lead a discussion about and do a written analysis of how to solve the dilemma using the specific guidelines we have learned from religion and situation ethics. They will have a quiz on the vocabulary needed to help them make good ethical decisions in mid February.