Home Taught Tots: Teaching Boys the Bible (Part 2): The Rise of Civilization

Sumer, Babel, and Ur, Oh My! Unit two covered the rise of civilization from Genesis 10-12. After the flood recedes, Noah's descendants multiply and start building cities, towers, and civilizations that we have evidence of today! Click Bible Archaeology to read about the discovery of Abraham’s homeland, Ur, by Sir Leonard Woolley. There are also pictures of statues, jewelry, and ziggurats! This unit was absolutely fascinating to me since this ancient Biblical cities are part of modern day Iraq. This link has more information on rise of civilizations.

Unfortunately I did not take pictures of this unit, but here are just some of the activities we did:

--We looked at pictures of ziggurats (see one above), then created our own mazes on paper. You can even make your own maze online here.

--We created a coil pot, added handles and painted them to make a nice home made present for grandma’s birthday. Click here for a tutorial on how to make a coil pot.

--We didn’t do this Coil Pot Game, but I think it would be a super fun thing to add.

--We built a block tower as high as we could. Then tried to build a tower together using only gibberish noises. (Like the tower of Babel)

--I buried items in the sand box and the boys carefully “excavated” them using spoons and small paintbrushes.

--Read and discussed library books.

Note about library books: Some of our best learning experiences occur on the couch looking over a borrowed book. I go through the books slowly and let the boys ask lots of questions. If they see a picture or hear something that catches their attention we stop and talk about it or even get up and put it into action! If the book is too wordy I just read the picture captions. If we want to learn more we look it up on the internet or just let our imaginations run wild. I suggest letting books be more of an interactive experience rather than a just-sit-down-and-listen experience.

If your library is small (like ours) and doesn't have a great selection of books, check to see if it is connected to an inter-library system online. I am able to go online and reserve books from other (much bigger) libraries in our county. They will even deliver the books to my local library and notify me when my books have arrived. This saves me so much time! I can just browse the books online by subject at my leisure. I get enough books for us to read one or two each day. Just be sure to reserve them a few weeks before the unit starts : )

Next Unit: Egypt and the Exodus