Mystery of History: Lesson Four - Noah and the Flood

We all know the story of Noah and the flood which almost killed off the world as we know it. Years ago, before I even knew about the God who created our world, I remember playing Noah’s ark with my friends and upside down chairs as the ark. But it was only when I came to know Christ as my savour that I really understood its importance, and it is with that in mind that I created this lesson. I want my girls to experience the fun, and also learn about its importance in the Bible. I use The Mystery of History as my spine and add lots of fun hands on activities as I go along.

Reading about Noah and the Flood

Firstly, I read from the Mystery of History text book. The lesson focuses more on before and after the flood than on the actual flood itself. To supplement I read the chapters about Noah building the ark and about the flood from the DK Family Bible (to this day, one of my favourite resources for Bible time). We also used the New Unger’s Bible Handbook to dig a bit deeper:

I also carried on reading Ruth Beechick’s book entitled Adam and his Kin, which covers both Noah’s life and times as well as the flood.

Written Work for Noah and the Flood

Instead of the usual narration and copy work, I decided to try some keyword outlines with the girls, just to give them one more writing tool. I copied some simple notes onto the white board for the girls and I to go through and keyword. As this is very new to the girls, I helped as much as possible. I will be writing a separate post about keyword outlines, so I will not go into too much detail here. Once they had picked out the keywords, I helped them to rewrite the passage. They then used this as copy work:

The girls also completed a question and answer sheet all about facts they should have remembered from our reading:

I also had them do some Bible copy work about God’s Covenant with Noah, using my very own note pages (they are available free at the bottom of this lesson):

Name Study of Adam to Noah

Did you know there are some who believe that God left a promise of a redeemer in Genesis? I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I did know I wanted to show the girls. Because, y’know, it’s kinda cool!

Apparently, when you write down all the named male descendants of Noah dating all the way back to Adam, along with what their name means, you end up with the following:

Man appointed mortal sorrow. The Blessed God shall come down teaching. His death shall bring the despairing comfort

Now, whether that is a real secret message from God, or just wishful thinking on some scholar’s part, I don’t know. But you can’t deny it is interesting 🙂

Timeline for Noah and the Flood

The girls added a couple more pictures to their timeline:

Multimedia Options for Learning about Noah and the Flood

What in the World contains a seven minute chapter on Noah’s Flood, which Noah’s Ark: An In-depth Study takes even further. Diane Waring is sometimes a little hard to listen too. She is so enthusiastic about her work that it is sometimes a bit much. So we break it up throughout the day 🙂

The little ones also watched an Answers in Genesis video ‘Was there a real Nosh’s ark and flood’ The website also had articles entitled ‘The Ark that Saves Us‘ and ‘Questions and Answers about the Ark’. Both were from their Kid’s magazine ‘How God Saved Noah’

I also printed out the poster they had and the girls read it together, make a cool notepage and tucked it into their folders:

Mapping Noah and the Flood

I printed out two maps from my Mystery of History resources: firstly, one of the world (to colour the area of Turkey) and secondly, a close up one of turkey (to show where the Mountain Ararat is). I also photocopied some small pictures of possible sightings of the ark:

Hands On Activities to go with Noah and the Flood

Recreating the effects of the flood:

Find a large bottle and fill it half full with sand, stones, earth, leaves, twigs and other plant bits.

Fill three quarter full of water and shake:

and allow to settle:

Can you see the layers?

These mimic somewhat the layers found around the world, but most obviously, in the Grand Canyon. I had created a note page for the girls to stick a photo of their bottled Grand Canyon (all note pages can be found as a free download at the end of the lesson):

Create a model of the climate before the flood:

According to the Bible, there was a mist that watered the ground, rather than rain before the flood. Noah had never seen rain before, which makes his obedience doubly impressive! We had created an enclosed garden in a bottle before so I did not necessarily want to repeat it.

I did however, make a note page with the Bible verse, a misty picture and room to stick a photo of the bottle garden they made a year or so ago:

Exploring Soap Nuts as an example of what one God-made plant could achieve:

The girls did a small research project on the properties and uses of soap nuts. Soap nut berries contain saponin which works as a surfactant in home-made cleaning products. Of course, there is a lot of supposition going on in my neck of the woods! Did Noah use soap nuts to keep the ark, the animals, the humans and their clothes clean and free of insect infestations (soap nuts act as an insecticide as well as a cleaner)? No, probably not. But I guess I wanted to show the girls what one little plant could do and how it could have potentially been used to keep things clean on the ark. For those true historians out there, please look away!

Making Soap Nut Liquid Detergent

Firstly, I created a note page for the girls to fill in (again found at the end of this post). Secondly, the girls made a generic liquid detergent from boiling two crushed up berries per cup of water for thirty minutes:

I then cut them up and we boiled some more:

At this point we were feeling very concerned about how a soap which smelt sooo bad could possibly cleanse you/your dishes/your clothes/anything at all. Honestly, it was honking bad!

Even with the doors and windows open, it stank. We let it cool down and drained it into a bottle:

It didn’t smell too bad at this point. B7 decanted some into a hand wash bottle for our bathroom. And y’know what? It smelt fine. And was nicely sudsy and cleansing. Huh…who knew? I’m not sure it would look very appetising for guests to use, it being a rather grubby brown colour and all….

We have grand plans to use it:

To wash hair
Wash dishes
Spray on Oscar’s bedding
And wash clothes

Hmmm…..we’ll see 😉

It was handy for the girls to experience how much just one plant could do. Noah would not have had access to shops like we do today. Everything he took on the ark needed to be well thought out and flexible, ideally with many uses and applications. I chose soap nuts because they were around in the ancient times, I had some in my cupboard and they were easy to use to demonstrate all I required. I made a note page which the girls pasted a photo of the resulting soap nut liquid detergent:

Playing with the Play Mobil Noah’s Ark and animals:

They made food, water and hay out of Plastocene, and generally had a lot of fun: