Mystery of History: Lesson Eight – The Tower of Babel

I wondered what on earth I could teach my girls about the Tower of Babel.  I mean, they have read their Bible.  And they are very familiar with the story.  What else was there?  It wasn’t until I began digging a bit deeper, using the Mystery of History text as my starting point, that I realised just how much fun this could be.

Tower of Babel: Reading

Firstly, I read from the Mystery of History text book.   Next, to supplement, I read the chapters about the Tower of Babel 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:

  

Writing about Tower of Babel

Picture Narration of Bruegel’s ‘Tower of Babel’

Multimedia Options for Learning About the Tower of Babel

I read the girls three articles from the Kids Answers in Genesis Magazine

Tower of Babel: Digging Deeper – King Nimrod

Engineering Project: Build your own Tower of Babel

First, the girls tried building the tower with just plastic cups:

Then asked if they could try using paper to stabilise:

Which, of course, worked much better, giving the structure some much needed stability:

However, even the paper and cup tower needed the girls careful handling, otherwise they found this happen:

Oh dear!  Back to the drawing board, so to speak:

Carefully, they tried to construct a tower higher than they were.  They were determined this time:

But, alas, the paper cups had their own ideas!

Charlotte was having none of it!  She helped her younger sisters build a tower which almost touched the clouds (or at the very least, was heading up towards the ceiling!):

Job done!  The girls took photos and create a note page for their folders.

Tower of Babel Fun Game: Communication Confusion

This was a fun game to play:

So, Thomas had to say the number 1 card with his mouth full of marsh-mallows.  Unfortunately, he found this very hard.  Between gagging, I took some photos which he may very well kill me for putting on my blog  🙂

Charlotte took on card 2.  We decided she had to attempt to get her point across using absolutely no speech, grunts or props 🙂  She hated this!  Lol!

Gary tried to communicate card 3 using rhyming slang:

Lillie used Ob language to communicate card 4 ( she pre-prepared her card on a white board):

B7 did her card using pictograms/pictures on the white board:

…which she did with remarkable ease and so quickly, I managed to get only one photo.

Finally, it was A9, who finished off the Bible verse only mouthing her words, no whispering.  This was much harder that I thought it was going to be…

This was GREAT fun 🙂

Possibly, I had more fun than the rest of them put together!  Having created the game, I couldn’t actually take part.  So, I just sat back and giggled at everyone else.  There was a lot of fodder for teasing.  Just saying.

Tower of Babel Multiple Language Pairs Game

A fun pairs game from Bible Story Printables.  There are two cards for each language.  The children placed them all face down on the carpet and took it in turns to pick up two at a time:

I was pleased by all we did.  Next up, Gilgamesh!

I have also created a MEGA Mesopotamia Unit Study post which is full to the brim of free printables and heaps of activities. Do take a look!

Further Resources

All Mystery of History Posts:

All History Posts

If you would like a copy of any of the notepages shown in this post, click on the link below!

Free Notepages: The Tower of Babel

For lots more free printables, click on the link below:

Free Printables