Children's Church: Confusion - Tower of Babel

This regular (ha! We'll see...) feature is for Sunday school mamas like me who are easily distracted, especially by Pinterest (a.k.a. The Evil One) and want to see ideas for children's church organized by topic. Check out other topics here.

I love how my ABC curriculum summarizes the history of the world with the 7 C's:

Creation
Corruption (the fall)
Catastrophe (flood)
Confusion (Babel)
Christ (Christmas)
Cross (Easter)
Consummation (end of Earth)

This lesson took two weeks and focused on the fourth "C" - confusion.

First, I gave the kids cards that said "hello" in different languages. They had to find someone with the same language as them, then divide into two groups. Each group then raced to stack coffee cups. Each cup had words from our recent memory verse.  I've seen this done where you write on the lip and stack the cups inside each other like this picture, found at When You Rise.

For this lesson, I wanted a tall tower, though, so I wrote on the body of the cup and had the kids stack top to top and bottom to bottom. I had to alternate writing words right side up and upside down to get it to be readable after it was stacked. The tower looked like this picture, found at The Educators' Spin on it. 

After this, I had the kids build a tower, like this one from Wisconsin Country Mom, only with toothpicks and marshmallows.

I explained in detail how to build a square base, but I gave the next set of instructions in gibberish. I acted really frustrated with them when they didn't understand me, repeating the nonsense words over and over. Of course that led to the story of the Tower of Babel.

We briefly talked about how people groups became separated from one another and over time lost genetic material and had more similar features, like eye color, amount of melanin in skin, hair, etc. We read Acts 17:26-27 and talked about how scientists have mapped the human genome and discovered that there really is only one race. Science confirms the Bible! This also led to a discussion about treating people equal and not judging someone by their physical features. We finished with this craft:

My sample to show the kids what to do

Calvin's finished product. Reed was so meticulous, he didn't finish at church and I'm sure his paper is currently hiding with 1.000 other unfinished-because-I'm-a-perfectionist projects. I wish I could find it, because it was adorable!

 I drew a globe and wrote Acts 17:26a around the edges (I totally would have typed and printed, but my printer was - and still is, months later - not working). Then I gave each kid a baby wipe and spread out ink pads in different flesh colors. The kids were supposed to stamp around the world, wiping their finger clean between colors. Then, they had markers to draw on hair, faces, and bodies. As we worked, I would point out different features, "Oh! Reed put freckles on one of his people. I think freckles are so cute!... Don't forget different eye shapes too. My friend Ann is Korean and has the most beautiful almond-shaped eyes...You could draw people with disabilities. God loves people in wheelchairs too. It's a good thing they'll be no more wheelchairs in heaven, though. Why do we have wheelchairs on earth?..." I thought they'd either rush through it or get bored with the craft before our time was up, but they were almost all very intently working - some even after church dismissed.