The

Tower

of

Babel

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel;..."  Genesis 11:1-9

I am always looking for verses in the Bible that I can use to plan games for the youth at church.  As I was reading through Genesis I started making preparations to play a game with the story of the Tower of Babel.  With the help of a few friends we collected boxes, ranging in size from computer and apple boxes to cereal boxes.  We also collected cardboard tubes from wrapping paper and paper towels.  Our large pile of trash would be the building blocks for our tower. 

Before the game I read the story to the children and told them we were going to build a tall tower like the tower of Babel.  I explained that since we didn't know many languages, we would have to pretend to speak the languages.  I had a bowl with the languages we would use and each child picked a name from the bowl.  They were surprised to read the words, "dog", "cat", "cow", "pig", "sheep", etc. on the papers.  I told them that they could only speak in the words of their chosen "family".  Then the fun began.  I was really surprised at how tall they stacked the boxes.  When it almost reached the ceiling and I was afraid it would topple over on them, I told them to use all the smaller boxes left to build the city around the tower.  We had about 15 children working on the tower and that was a good number.  (It would be difficult to have more than that working together on the same tower.)

After all the building supplies had been added to the city I gathered our barnyard of children together and talked to them about how difficult it had been to work together when they couldn't understand each other.  I reminded them of the children in our community who can't speak or understand our language.  God made them just as He made us.  I reminded the children to be kind to others even if they can't understand them.

For our number guessing game, I bought a tall canister of animal cookies and everyone guessed the number of cookies in the jar.  (I did not count them this time, but used the estimated number of cookies in the nutrition label on the jar.)

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