Ogham

deannainmaine

Ogham is an ancient Irish written language that was found throughout Ireland and, to a lesser extent, in England, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales. Though the exact age of the alphabet is unknown, it is generally agreed upon that it originated anywhere between the 3rd and 6th century.

The alphabet is comprised of one group of vowels and three groups of consonants (though more came later). Each group has five letters for a total of twenty letters. The letters themselves are made of up to five lines stemming from, or crossing, a central vertical line. What is interesting to me is that many of the letters have names of trees.

Ogham was mostly written on stone, sticks, stakes and trees usually depicting people’s names to mark ownership, territories and graves. The only surviving Ogham words are found etched in stone. Ogham is read from right to left and from the bottom up.

As a teacher who loves to combine subjects that originate with nature, I would create lessons that revolve around the Ogham alphabetic letters that have names of trees. I like the idea of having students create a field guide that depicts each letter and the tree associated with it. There could be pictures, descriptions and information on mythology or legends associated with each tree. If I happen to have those trees in my area I would take a walk and make direct observations of the trees. I would also have my students do a comparative analysis between languages of similar age. This could include a nice geography lesson and even a lesson on how language moved between cultures. As a final assessment I would love to see what alphabet my own students could create using nature as inspiration.

#naturebasedlearning #naturebasededucation #ogham#unitstudies #unitstudy

New pine out of an old