The Tower of Babel
How To: Children's Bible Lessons
Read the story from the Bible here. Or, use a children’s Bible appropriate to the age of your listeners.
Genesis 11:1-9—from the International Children’s Bible
"At this time the whole world spoke one language. Everyone used the same words. As people moved from the East, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia. They settled there to live.
They said to each other, “Let’s make bricks and bake them to make them hard.” So they used bricks instead of stones, and tar instead of mortar. Then they said to each other, “Let’s build for ourselves a city and a tower. And let’s make the top of the tower reach high into the sky. We will become famous. If we do this, we will not be scattered over all the earth.”
The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. The Lord said, “Now, these people are united. They all speak the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will be able to do anything they want. Come, let us go down and confuse their language. Then they will not be able to understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth. And they stopped building the city. That is where the Lord confused the language of the whole world. So the place is called Babel.[a] So the Lord caused them to spread out from there over all the whole world."
Bible Story Bag Activities:
Coloring Sheets or This Online Coloring Sheet
Word Find (for older kids)
Tower of Babel Pop-up Craft
Other Activities:
Play with Blocks—Use Jenga blocks, Lego blocks, or other blocks to take turns building towers.
Craft Project—use large paper, paint, and the printout of windows to create a large, colorful tower. If you would rather not use paint, cut rectangles from construction paper and have children glue them on the paper.
Tower of Babel Lego game—all you need is the printout, dice, and small Lego blocks. Each child starts with one Lego block as their pawn and adds to their Lego as the game progresses.
Brick Making (for older kids)
Media:
Languages—learn to say a word (such as “Hello”) in different languages to hear how different languages sound. Here is a song to help.
Ancient art of making bricks—on YouTube
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