News of the Museum
March-April 1997
 Girl Using a Sieve: Photo: Varda Polak Sahm, from the Exhibition of her Photographs held in the Land of Eretz Yisrael Museum, Tel Aviv, from September to January, 1996. The Exhibition has since travelled to "the Museum of Bread" in Ulm, Germany.
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 Children Grinding Grains of Wheat into Flour, using ancient grinding stones Photo: Varda Sahm.
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EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
"To Learn About the Past as a Bridge to the Present" - This program of meetings between Jewish and Arab children is continuing successfully. During the month of March the meetings between the schools from Migdal HaEmek and Nazareth, and from Kibbutz Gazit and Kfar Masr, were devoted to a mutual exchange of visits to the settlement of each school , including the school itself and those public buildings which provide special facilities for its inhabitants, such as "The Institute for the Blind" and "The Club for the Elderly" in Migdal HaEmek. The visits were very successful.During April there were no meetings, due to the holiday of Pesach, and of school holidays in both sectors.
Still to come are meetings for May and June. In May this will take the form of a hike together and in June there will be meetings of each pair of schools, with the participation of the parents, to sum up the whole project.
MUSEUM POOL
In the framework of the of the program for recurrent visits to the Museum of classes of schoolchildren in the Jezreel Valley district, we received a number of visits to carry out activities according to a program drawn up previously. We worked mainly with 4th and 5th grade pupils who were learning the Book of Judges in their Bible/History lessons; and we reenacted the Battle of Devorah with the help of a large topographical sandbox and cutout soldiers and chariots. Summing up this activity one of the pupils remarked, "Now I understand all those complicated words." So if this child came to an understanding of the terms and the framework of the story, then we have done our work well.
LECTURES FOR ADULTS
During the last few months there was a decline in the number of participants and we are trying to find the reason by means of personal letters to all those who have attended in the past. The answers we have received so far have been very encouraging.
INTERNET VISITORS
At the end of April our site will be one year old. To date we have had 4,200 visitors.
THE COMING MONTHS OF MAY-JUNE
May will be mainly devoted to the agricultural activity "From the Wheat to Bread". This begins in the fields, where the children reap the wheat and make sheaves. Then comes threshing and winnowing to separate the grain from the chaff, using an ancient wooden threshing sledge. Then the chaff is sieved to further separate the grain. The clean grain is then ground into flour using saddle querns (ancient grinding stones), then the children make the flour into dough and bake it on small Arab ovens.This activity is for classes who are learning the topic "Bread" and serves as an introduction and preparation for the coming Festival of Weeks (Hug Shvuot). The Holyday itself is on 12th June and the Museum is preparing an activity for the whole district around the topic "Symbols of the Festival and the 7 Species." The 7 Species are mentioned in the Bible and they consist of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.