The Tower of Babel

Passage:

Familiarize yourself with this passage:

Genesis 11:1-9
Up to this point in the Bible, the world still had one language. When Noah can off the ark, God told him he should be fruitful and spread out over the whole earth. After some time there were many people again, but they did not obey God; they did not spread out over the whole earth. They got comfortable in their one place and thought they no longer needed God. Instead, they came together to make a name for themselves. They though if they worked together, they could build a tower that would reach the heavens to be with God. When God saw their determination to stay together, he came down and confused their languages. So, the work on their tower stopped and the people were forced to spread out.

Object lesson:

As you tell the story, begin building a tower out of blocks (or whatever other stackable material you have at hand). Build it fast so that when you get to the part of the story when God comes to look at the tower, your tower is very tall, and you can stand to look at it. Then, as you tell the kids that God confused their languages, knock down the tower and scatter the pieces around. Explain to the kids that, although God did not knock down the tower, he did create confusion among the people by changing all their languages, just like you did when you knocked it over and scattered it around the room. Explain to the kids that because of the confusion, the people could no longer finish working on the tower, and had to move to other parts of the world. This is why we have so many different languages all over the earth.

Memory Verse:

Psalm 8:1
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

Jesus Connection:

God knew that no matter how tall these people built their tower, they could never reach heaven by themselves. The people did not need a tower that reached heaven, they needed a Savior who came down from heaven and brought them up! The way to be with God was not through a tower, but through a person. The people would never have been able to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven, so one day God would have to send heaven down to earth in the form of Jesus!

Songs:

“Jesus Loves the Little Children”

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world;
Red and yellow, black and white, They are precious in his sight;
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jesus loves the little children, all the Children of the world.
English, Irish, Dutch and Jew, and the little Norwegian too.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Games and Activities:

Sponge Tower

Supplies Needed:
• A bunch of cheap dish sponges, cut into thirds or quarters
Directions:
1. Allow the children to work together to build the tallest towers with the strips of sponges. Have them experiment with differently shaped structures.
2. If you want to make this into a competitive game, have twice as many sponges and split the kids into two team and see which team can make the tallest tower at the end of a certain period of time.

Crafts/Projects:

Tower of Babel

Supplies Needed:
• Empty paper towel roll tubes
• Small paper plates
• Brown and green pain
• Small rectangular pieces of dry sponge
• Sponge paint brushes
• Cotton balls
• Scissors
• Glue
• Brown construction paper, cut into a circle, and then cut again into a spiral, with the Bible verse from the tower of Babel story written along the spiral.
Directions:
1. First, using your dry sponge, make brick patterns along your tube by dipping into your brown paint and sponging on, leaving gaps in between each "brick." Once painted, let dry. (You may have to do this portion of the craft first, set it aside and do a different activity, and come back later.)
2. After your paint has dried, use a little glue to attach each end of the paper spiral to each end of the tube, then spread out evenly to look like stairs going up your tower.  Glue the tower to your base and glue your cotton balls to the top, for clouds.
3. Lastly, we added some green and brown paint to the base
4. You may need to see the pictures of the project in order to have a better understanding of the directions. Click on this link and scroll down part way to see step by step pictures of how to assemble this craft. http://homeschoolingmom2mags.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-tower-of-babel.html

Coloring Page:

*This coloring page would be best printed on a landscape setting, rather than on portrait.

Noah and the Ark

Passage:

Familiarize yourself with this passage:

Genesis 6:1-9:19
God was not happy. It had not been very long since he had created the world, and already it was covered in people who sinned all the time and did not care. God had enough. He would destroy the world with a flood. He could have chosen to create new men and women after the flood, but instead he had one man and his family build an ark. Noah took up this challenge. He build an ark for his family and two of every living creature on the earth. He the ark was finished and filled with animals and Noah’s family, God shut the doors, and the rain came pouring down. Everything that was outside of the ark was completely destroyed. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The waters covered even the highest mountains. There was water over all the earth for 150 days. Then, God dried up the waters. When Noah, his family, and all the animals came out of the ark, God promised he would never flood the earth like this again, and put a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this promise.

Object lesson:

This is a great story to have the children help you act out! As you talk about Noah building the ark, have the children pretend they are building (a hammer or sawing motion). When the animals came on the ark two by two, have the children walk in a circle with a buddy, pretending to be different animals. When the rain started coming down, have the children rub their hands together or snap their fingers (If you want it to be a really bad storm, have them clap and stomp to make thunder sounds!) As you allow the children this chance to interact with the story, you are helping to make this very old story something that is more real and present for them.

Memory Verse:

Genesis 9:16
Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

Jesus Connection:

God hates sin. We cannot be with God if we have sin in our lives. That is why God wanted to destroy the world in Noah’s time, because there was so much sin. And, just like Noah and his family needed to be saved from the oncoming flood, we also need to be saved from God’s wrath. Noah had a boat, but we have something much better to save us, Jesus! Jesus can take care of our sin problem forever, so that we can be in a relationship with a holy and perfect God.

Songs

“The Lord Said to Noah”

The Lord said to Noah, "There's gonna be a floody, floody."
Lord said to Noah, "There's gonna be a floody, floody."
"Get those children out of the muddy, muddy!"
Children of the Lord.
So Noah, he built him, he built him an arky, arky.
Noah, he built him, he built him an arky, arky.
Made it out of gopher barky, barky.
Children of the Lord.
The animals, they came on, they came on by twosies, twosies.
The animals, they came on, they came on by twosies, twosies.
Elephants and kangaroosies, roosies.
Children of the Lord.
It rained, and poured, for forty daysies, daysies.
Rained, and poured, for forty daysies, daysies.
Nearly drove those animals crazy, crazy.
Children of the Lord.
The sun came out and dried up the landy, landy.
Sun came out and dried up the landy, landy.
Everything was  fine and dandy, dandy.
Children of the Lord.
Now that is the end, the end of my story, story.
That is the end, the end of my story, story.
Everything is hunky dory, dory.
Children of the Lord.

Games/Activities

Memory

Supplies Needed:
• 10-20 animals printed on cards; two copies of each animal
Directions:
• God told Noah to bring two of each animal onto the arc. Tell the kids that they will be helping Noah find all the animals he needs to take with him on the arc.
• Lay all the cards out on the floor/table, face down. Make sure they are all mixed up.
• One at a time, allow the kids to try to find matching animals but picking two cards out of the pile and turning them over. If they find a match, they keep the cards. If they do not find a match, the cards return face down to the pile.
• The child with the most animal pairs at the end of the game wins!

Rainbow of Colored Water

Supplies needed:
• Red, blue, and yellow food coloring.
• 6 clear cups
• Water
Directions:
1. Fill each cup with water.
2. Start with taking the red food coloring and putting 2-3 drops in the first cup. Ask the kids what color they see.  Ask them to name several things from creation that that are red that God may think of when he sees a rainbow.
3. Repeat step 2 making orange (yellow and red).
4. Repeat step 2 making yellow
5. Repeat step 2 making green (yellow and blue)
6. Repeat step 2 making blue
7. Repeat step 2 making purple (blue and red)

Crafts/Projects

Colorful Rainbow Hands

Supplies Needed:
• Paper in rainbow colors (red, yellow, orange, green, blue, and purple)
• Pencils or markers
• Kid Scissors
• Glue
Directions:
1. Have the children trace one of their hands on each color of paper (or trace it for them if they are very young).
2. Cut out each of the colored hands and glue them together, in order (red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple) in a rainbow-like arc.
*This craft is simple, and is best suited for younger children

Rain Sticks

Supplies Needed:
• Empty plastic water bottles
• Aluminum foil
• Rice
• Decorating materials:
o Colored paper
o Colored tissue paper
o Ribbon
o Tape
o String
o Stickers
o Etc…
Directions:
1. Cut several strips of aluminum foil and loosely crumple them into ropes small enough to fit into the neck of the water bottle. Twirl them as you insert, so they wind around as they go in. The more strips you put into the bottle, the more surfaces the rice will hit as it goes down.
2. Add a couple of inches of rice and replace the cap on the bottle.
3. Slowly sip the bottle and you will hear the sound of rain as the rice makes its way over the foil and down to the bottle.
4. Allow the children time to decorate their bottles.

Coloring Page