People want to see this king’s treasures.
Do you like old things? Come see King Tut’s treasures. Tut was a ruler in Egypt. See his gold jewelry. Look at his tools and furniture. King Tut’s things were at a U.S. museum. Now they are at a museum in France. King Tut stored his treasures on Earth. We store our treasures in heaven.
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Treasures filled King Tut’s tomb. Go to the museum to see the precious things. See Egyptian jewelry. Look at King Tut’s furniture. Stare at his gold face mask. “Please see them, visit them, before they return to Egypt forever,” says an Egyptian leader. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:21 to store treasures in heaven, not on Earth. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
DID YOU KNOW?
• A king in Egypt was called Pharaoh. King Tut became a pharaoh when he was nine years old! His full name was King Tutankhamen. He died when he was 18 or 19 years old.
• Pharaohs were buried in a tomb inside a pyramid. King Tut’s was large. It was sealed shut. No one opened it for 3,245 years. Howard Carter discovered it one hundred years ago.
• A pharaoh was buried with his riches. King Tut’s tomb held more than 5,000 things! There were weapons, tools, and jewelry. There were walking sticks, clothes, and chariots!
• Egyptian leaders want people to see King Tut’s treasures. Egypt is sending 150 of the objects around the world. People in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and South Korea can see the old items before they are returned to Egypt.
• Can you think of any pharaohs in the Bible? One pharaoh made Joseph a leader in Egypt. Another pharaoh’s daughter adopted baby Moses. God rescued his people from a pharaoh.
What can tiny “water bears” teach us?
“Water bears” are tardigrades. They are as small as a period. But they can live in hot heat, freezing cold, and without air. Scientists want to learn from water bears. They are able to dry up. Could people dry blood like that? Might crops live through drought?
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Colossians 1:16 reminds us that, “For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible.” Would you have created a one-eyed, eight-footed, alien-like creature almost impossible to kill? Aren’t you glad that God did? Biologist Thomas Boothby wants to make blood last longer than six weeks. Could soldiers take their own dried blood with them into battle? Could the same process help vaccines last longer too?
DID YOU KNOW?
• The word “tardigrade” means “slow stepper.” These creatures are also called “pipsqueaks” and “moss piglets.” German pastor Johann August Ephraim Goeze discovered tardigrades. He might have called them “slow steppers” because six feet face forward and two face backward!
• More than 1,000 kinds of tardigrades have been discovered. These creatures can live in saltwater or fresh water. They can live in hot springs and under layers of solid ice. You can find them on stone walls and on roofs.
• One scientist found a new species of water bear in the parking lot of his apartment building. Its round eggs have tiny bowl-shaped knobs that are topped with spaghetti-like threads. He thinks these help the eggs attach to the surface where they are laid.
• Tardigrades can be found on moss. It is a group of fuzzy plants called “Bryophyta.” There are thousands of kinds of mosses in the world. They usually grow in shady, damp places. And that is where you should look if you want to find some tardigrades.
• Find a small patch of moss. Wet it with tap water and wait 20 minutes. Then squeeze the water out onto a flat glass dish. Let the mud settle. Look at the moss through a hand magnifier or a microscope.
Rodeos aren’t just for grownups!
Many kids love Youth Rodeo. So they practice at home every day. And they compete on weekends. These kids were at a rodeo in Midland, Texas, in March. Rodeo kids learn how to work hard. They spend lots of time with their families. They learn what it takes to be a leader. And they have lots of fun!
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Kids from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Colorado want to be in the Annual AJRA National Finals Rodeo held in Sweetwater, Texas, in July. They get points for how well they do in rodeos like this one. Families travel to rodeos on the weekends. Kids as young as five and up to the age of 15 can take part in these rodeos. They help keep customs of the West alive. Rodeo horses must run fast, like the war horses in Joel 2:4.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Rodeos have many fun events for kids and their horses. Children your age may ride sheep or calves, run their horses around poles, and tie goats, among other things.
• In “Mutton Bustin’,” a sheep is loaded into a chute. An eager cowboy climbs onto the sheep’s back and wraps his hands around a clump of wool. The chute is opened, the sheep runs full-tilt across the arena, and the child hangs on for dear life. The rider that stays on the longest is the winner.
• Peewee pole bending requires each horse and rider to weave around a set of six poles in the shortest time possible. A goat or calf scramble requires a contestant to run to a goat or calf that is tied to a stake in the middle of the arena. She grabs a ribbon from the animal’s tail and runs back across the finish line.
• Some youth rodeos also let kids try to dress a goat! They are given a shirt and a pair of shorts. The kids go out as a team. They catch the goat, dress it, and get it back across the finish line. But the winning goat must still be wearing the clothes!
• Older kids take part in more riding contests, like racing around barrels. All kids may wear cowboy hats in some events. But they must wear a helmet for any kind of riding. Do you take part in rodeos? Would you like to?
The elephant says, “Thank you.”
Six baby elephants needed help. A mud hole trapped them. Who helped them? Rangers came to the rescue. They moved mud. They made a way out of the hole. The elephant babies were free! They hurried into the jungle. One baby elephant looked back. It wanted to say, “Thank you.”
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Rangers in Thailand found the stranded elephants. The rangers used hoes and pick axes to dig through the mud. They made a path out of the hole. All six baby elephants got out of the muck. The rangers cheered! “Gone, they’re gone,” cried a ranger. One baby elephant stopped to say, “Thank you.” The Bible tells the story of a man who stopped to say thank you. Read Luke 17:11-19.
DID YOU KNOW?
• A calf is a baby elephant. A herd is a family of elephants. Rangers saw signs that a herd was close by. Elephants trample land. They uproot trees and dig holes in the ground. Can you think of other ways rangers knew that a herd was near?
• Elephants live mostly in Africa and Asia. African elephants have larger ears than Asian elephants. Elephants are the official animal of Thailand. Thailand is in Asia.
• An herbivore is an animal that eats plants. Elephants eat things like fruit, bark, and grass. Are they herbivores? Yes!
• Elephants like eating sugarcane. Sometimes they raid sugarcane farms. Elephants can eat more than 300 pounds of food every day. That’s a lot of sugarcane!
• Elephants have long trunks. The trunk helps elephants breathe. It also helps them suck up water and dig holes. The baby elephants’ trunks didn’t dig them out of the mud. What did the rangers use to dig through the mud?
Divers may visit a shipwreck.
Greece is a peninsula. Most of the country is surrounded by water. It has a jagged coastline. Hundreds ships have wrecked there. Now divers may visit a ship that wrecked over two thousand years ago. They will see thousands of ancient vases. Maybe more items will be discovered.
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Diving near shipwrecks has been against the law in Greece. Experts were afraid divers would steal important treasures. Only a few divers were allowed to see the Peristera [per-iss-te-RAH] shipwreck in April. The ship was built 500 years before Jesus was born. It carried thousands of large clay jars. What was in them? Now more divers may be allowed to see this wreck. The Apostle Paul was in a shipwreck on his way to stand trial in Rome. Read about it in Acts 27.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Greece is made up of a mountainous mainland and small islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas. People live on about 140 of those islands. Hundreds of the others are just rocks. The largest island is Crete and it is in the Mediterranean Sea.
• People believe that a man named Aesop lived in Greece about 600 years before Jesus was born. He was a slave in a rich man’s house. And he learned about people by the way they behaved.
• Soon he began to tell stories, or fables, about animals that acted and talked like the people he knew. And each fable had a lesson. Have you heard of “The Fox and the Grapes,” “The Wind and the Sun,” or “The Lion and the Mouse?” See if someone will read these to you.
• Have you ever been able to swim in the ocean with goggles or a mask so your eyes are open underwater? What did you see? Imagine being able to explore undersea plants and animals where they live! That’s why people scuba dive.
• This kind of diving is not recommended for young children. We do not know what happens to their bodies when they dive deep. But some communities have scuba diving classes for kids. They are held in swimming pools.
She is a ball of energy.
Florence M. may be small. But she is always moving! Mrs. M. pole vaults! She flings her body over a bar five feet off the ground. She has set a record for women of her age—84. But she also does the long jump, leaps over hurdles, and runs races. She is a champion!
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Moses was 120 years old when he died. But his eyesight was clear and he was as strong as ever. Read Deuteronomy 34:7. Perhaps Florence Meiler [MY-ler] from Burlington, Vermont, might not live as long as Moses did. But she seems as strong as ever. She took her first long jump when she was 60. She first vaulted with a pole when she was 65. Mrs. M. worked out six days each week before she went to a World Masters Championship in Poland at the end of March. No other woman her age did a pole vault.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Today’s track and field events are usually held at an outdoor stadium. It has an oval track that surrounds a grassy area in the center. Running events take place on the track. Jumping and throwing events are held on the grassy area.
• Mrs. Meiler competes in a half-mile race and leaps over hurdles on an indoor or outdoor track. She performs a high jump, a long jump, the shot put, and the pole vault on a flat area, called the field.
• She jumps over a thin wooden crossbar for high jumping. The bar is raised every time she gets over it without hitting it. She runs up to a wide white board on the ground and then jumps as far as she can for the long jump. She holds a small and heavy metal ball, the shot put, between her chin and shoulder. She then pushes it straight out and as far away from her body as she can.
• Mrs. M. holds a long bendable pole for the pole vault. She runs forward and jams the end into a small box on the ground. She holds the pole as she swings her legs up and turns her body so that her legs go over the bar without touching it.
• She throws her arms up and her body sails over the bar. Then she lands on a soft mat. Now that is something that most grandmothers cannot do!
Have you ever seen so many flowers?
There was lots of winter rain. It was cold. Then spring came to southern California. Poppies, poppies, and more poppies covered the hillsides. It was a “super bloom.” People rushed to Lake E. They crowded the town. They blocked the road. The city had to turn people away.
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The people of Lake Elsinore felt they were ready for poppy-gazers. They even had a free shuttle service. But 150,000 people came in one day to see the bright orange flowers! Some fainted in the heat. A rattlesnake bit a dog. The highway became a parking lot. The mayor closed the town to visitors for the rest of the day. King Solomon lived in splendor. But Matthew 6:29 tells us that nothing Solomon had was as beautiful as the lilies of the field that God created.
DID YOU KNOW?
• The deserts of the southwestern United States had an explosion of wildflowers early in the spring. God created their seeds to lie protected in the soil for years. Heavy winter rains washed away the seeds’ coverings this year. The seeds sprouted and grew.
• Poppies are found all over the world. Some are under an inch tall. Others grow to 20 feet high! Their flowers can be smaller than a thimble or larger than a dinner plate. And there are over 800 kinds of wild poppies.
• People in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand use small artificial poppies to remember on November 11 those who died in wars. Real poppies were the first flowers to grow in the churned-up dirt of many soldiers’ graves in Europe.
• Primroses and lilies are other flowers that sprang up in the deserts this spring. And painted lady butterflies fluttered in to enjoy the nectar and to lay eggs on thistle plants. Their caterpillars made their fluffy shelters from silk.
• People in another California town were ready for “super bloom” watchers. Borrego Springs stocked up on gas at gas stations and food for restaurants (more than 550 meals in one day at Carlee’s). They did not want to run out when the tourists arrived.
Surprise! It is the longest.
Did you know that some caves are made from salt? They are found in dry places. People have been mapping the Malham Cave in Israel. It is six miles long! That makes it the longest salt cave in the world. Someone in the Bible was turned into a pillar of salt near this cave. Do you know who that was?
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Genesis 19:26 tells us that Lot’s wife “looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” This salt cave is near Mount Sodom and the southern tip of the Dead Sea. That sea is so salty that no fish or other animals can live there. There are not many salt caves in the world. Israel’s Cave Explorers Club worked more than two years to measure and map this cave. It is already two miles longer than one in Iran. And it has more parts yet to be mapped.
DID YOU KNOW?
• The Malham [MAL-um] Cave was formed when parts of the Earth’s crust moved. A deep dent formed. It flooded over and over again. And the floods left lots of salt behind.
• Salt mounds built up. Floodwaters carved out the cave. And saltwater dripped down into the cave.
• The drip, drip, drip of water over many years has formed dazzling white stalactites. These look like big icicles dripping from the ceiling. But they are salt.
• The Dead Sea is the deepest body of salt water in the world. The Don Juan Pond in Antarctica is the saltiest body of water in the world. It has twelve times more salt than what is found in the world’s oceans.
• The United States has the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The Salton Sea is in California. It was formed when the Colorado River flooded the area. Now water runs off the land and into the sea. The water is becoming more and more salty. Only tilapia fish live there now.
This ice sport uses brooms.
Two teams slip and slide on the ice. One slippery shoe makes it easy to slide. One player throws a heavy stone down the ice. Two players sweep the ice to steer the stone. Players shout to each other. Curling is a cool sport! More and more college kids join curling teams.
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Some kids in college like curling. People watch curling on TV. They think, “Hey! I can do that.” Curling is a game of strategy. Some people call it “chess on ice.” Curling isn’t a quiet game like chess. Players like to shout! Do you need to cool off? Slip and slide, sweep and shout in a game of curling! It is good to laugh and play. Proverbs 17:22 says, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
DID YOU KNOW?
• Curling is a game that started in Scotland hundreds of years ago. It is played on ice. The game has rocks, brooms, and lots of yelling. Curling games begin with a handshake. Then a coin is flipped to see which team slides its stone first.
• There are unusual words in the game of curling. The parts of the game are called “ends.” There are eight or ten “ends” in a game! The target is called the “house.” The ice is called the “curling sheet.” The team captain is called the “skip.”
• Two teams play the game. Each team has four players. Players slide eight heavy stones, one at a time, on ice toward the “house.” The team with a stone closest to the center of the house scores points.
• Players sliding the stone can make it “curl,” or turn. Other players sweep the ice with brooms. This makes the stone travel farther and straighter. Why do you think the game is called “curling?”
• Curling is popular in the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea. It became an Olympic sport in 1998. The U.S. won the Olympic gold medal in curling twenty years later. Can you figure out which year the U.S. won the gold?
They make nets by hand.
Do you play soccer? Maybe one day you will score a goal into a net like these. The Net factory is in Italy. It has only 18 workers. They make soccer nets. They weave the string. They tie the knots. They cut the nets. They do almost everything by hand.
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People in Monte Isola [ee-SO-lah], Italy, were fishermen and hunters long ago. They needed to catch fish and animals for food. So they became good at weaving nets. The workers at “La Rete,” “The Net,” factory learned how to weave nets too. But they make nets for sports instead of fishing. Their nets have been used in World Cup soccer games. Isaiah 22:18 records what God says He will do to a wicked man named Shebna. “He will whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land.”
DID YOU KNOW?
• Monte Isola is a beautiful island in the middle of Lake Iseo [ee-SAY-oh] in northern Italy. Fewer than 2,000 people live on the island. And all of The Net’s workers ride scooters to work every day.
• No one really knows when the first games of kicking a ball were started. But a game called “Cuju” was played in China about 4,000 years ago. It was played with a round ball on a large square area.
• A game first played in England about 1,000 years ago was called “foote balle.” The name and the game stuck. Now nearly every nation in the world calls the game “futbol” (football). But we in the United States usually refer to it as “soccer.” We call a different game “football.”
• Anyone can play futbol almost anywhere. Players in the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos play on empty lots covered with gravel and rocks. They use the streets in El Salvador. Fans in England might play on an empty lot. And some in Belize might play futbol on the beach.
• Millions of people in over 200 countries all over the world today play soccer. The first FIFA World Cup soccer game was played in 1930 in Uruguay. It is held every four years. Do you have a favorite team or player?
There was a cheese contest.
Three days of cheese. As many kinds as you please. What do they look like and how do they taste? Cheese makers want their cheese to win first place. The winner was announced after three days. A Swiss cheese from Ohio won the contest, The judges thought it looked and tasted the best! Three days of cheese.
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Judges looked closely at the cheese. It looked good. It felt good. It tasted great! The baby Swiss cheese from Ohio was a winner! People have been making and eating cheese for hundreds of years. Did you know that cheese is part of the story of David and Goliath? It tells in 1 Samuel 17:18 that David’s father gave him cheese to take to the army. “Also take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand.” That’s when David fought the giant!
DID YOU KNOW?
• Cheese is made from milk. It is warmed. Bacteria is added to the milk to make it thick and sour. Enzymes make the milk clumpy. The clumps are called curds. The curds are chopped and salted and pressed into blocks.
• Wait! It takes time to make good cheese. The cheese blocks are stored. They won’t be ready to eat for a while. Some cheese makers store cheese for months. Others store cheese for years. This gives the cheese time to “ripen.” Ripe cheese is ready to be eaten.
• What kind is it? There are hundreds of kinds of cheese. France alone has 400! Goat milk, cow milk, sheep milk, water buffalo milk, and reindeer milk can be used to make cheese.
• What did you call it? Some popular kinds of cheese are Cheddar, Swiss, Mozzarella, Gouda, Brie, and Muenster. Which cheese won second place in the U.S. Cheese Championship? It was a Gouda cheese!
• When is the next cheese contest? Don’t start making cheese yet! The contest is held only every two years. People from 35 states entered the contest this year. There were 2,555 cheeses in the contest!
See who is in our class!
Levi is six years old. He is sick a lot. How does he go to his Ohio school? See his face on the robot screen? Levi uses Face-time on his iPad. The robot is in the classroom. Levi makes it move. So Levi learns along with his friends. But he is safe at home.
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Levi Suttles has a sickness called “leukemia.” He must get medicine in the hospital and go to the doctor a lot. He gets tired. It is hard to be at school and to rest at home too. Engineering students at Ohio Sate University made the robot and taught Levi how to use it. Now his robot is ready to work when he is. The people at Ohio State did a kind thing for Levi. This is what the Apostle Paul tells us to do. Read Ephesians 4:32.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Leukemia is a kind of cancer. It causes the body to make too many white blood cells and not enough red blood cells. We need red blood cells to carry oxygen to all parts of our body. This illness makes most kids very weak and tired.
• It also makes them unable to fight off germs. Schools can be full of germs! You can see why Levi needs to stay at home.
• Scientists keep working to make robots helpful for kids. The “ikki” robot is made for sick kids. It reminds them when they need to take medicine. It takes their temperature. It can be a nightlight too.
• The QTrobot is made to help kids with autism. They speak to and work with this small robot more easily than they do with grownups. It calms the kids so they can concentrate on learning.
• Teachers also are trying out robots in the classroom. Hundreds of Chinese kindergarten classes use educational robots. And some Wisconsin school children read books with a robot called “Minnie.” What helpful thing would you create a robot to do?
