Anicient History - Tower of Babel & Sumer

For ART HISTORY we began a study of Pieter Bruegel and his painting above "The Tower of Babel.  For a brief study, I would suggest this site.  For a more in-depth study I would suggest this book "What Makes a Bruegel a Bruegel?" by Richard Muhlberger.  After a brief introduction, the book proceeds with analyzing (on a child's level) a painting per chapter, with interesting background and detailed zoom in.  We started reading this book this week and the boys are really enjoying it; his paintings are fascinating.  We are taking our time to enjoy and reading only one chapter a day.  I expect it will take us two weeks to finish.

Our READ ALOUD book for this week was "The Secret of the Royal Mounds: Henry Layard and the First Cities of Assyria" by Cynthia Jameson.  This was a wonderful piece of historical fiction/living history.  Chris read the boys one chapter a night and left them begging for more (literally).  The book is fast paced yet very detailed with much to expand upon; we had discussions of geography, customs, modes of travel, science, etc. as we read through the book.  You may want to pre-read for the littlest ones for there is some gory details discussed but not glorified.

ANCIENT HISTORY: We did this week's study over four days but it could easily be compressed into three.

DAY 1:  2242 BC Tower of Babel

• REVIEW:
•  Take the World Map and the “Noah Tree” created last week and color the world based on where the descendants of Noah’s sons settled (one color for each of his sons).
•  Sing “Song of Noah” to tune of “Bring Them In”.  The boys liked this as much as the "Silly Song" from Week 1.  It is clear I need to try to incorporate a song each week.

• Read Genesis 11:  1-9
• Discuss the passage
• What happened? narrate the passage 
•  Ask the name of the structure? (Trick question bible doesn’t name the tower) 
•  Where was it built? (Land of Shinar/Fertile Crescent)  Two possible locations are in the city of Nimrud in Iraq next to Tigris River (If you do this on Google Earth you can actually see the excavation site) and under “Tower of Ishtar” in Mari, Syria next to Euphrates River.  Locate these on a map.

• Read “The Puzzle of Ancient Man” pgs. 68-74 (Tower of Babel)

o   Discuss why did they built the tower

o   Discuss why God confused their language

• Read “Victor Journey Through the Bible” pgs. 16-17

o   Discuss what the Ziggurats looked like, what materials were used

o   Introduce Pieter Bruegel’s depiction of the Tower of Babel

DAY 2:  2242 BC Tower of Babel

• REVIEW:  Have students narrate what they learned about Babel

• Read “Tower of Babel” by Jon Taylor (22 pgs.)

o   Compare to the biblical account, what did they add or leave out?

• History Pockets “Mesopotamia”

o   Ziggurat Pop-up Book

o   While they are coloring Take moment to review how different cultures histories confirm this date: www.answersingenesis.org/go/peleg

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DAY 3:  c.2200 Sumerian Civilization in Mesopotamia

• REVIEW: ACAB “Acting Up” Play pg. 32  This was a very simple skit about the Tower of Babel but the boys absolutely adored it, they kept wanting to practice and presented it twice to their father when he got home.  I will be looking for more skits to add to our History study as well.

• As an Introduction to Sumer read “Everything You Need to Know About - World History” by Zeman pg. 3

• Read “You Wouldn’t Want to be a Sumerian Slave” by Jacqueline Morley

o   Discuss two different accounts of Sargon, why are they different?

o   Discuss cultural ideas vs. Bible

o   Discuss cultural ideas vs. today

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 DAY 4:  c. 2200 Sumerian Civilization in Mesopotamia

• Review:  Narrate what they learned from “You Wouldn’t Want to be…” book.

• History Pockets “Mesopotamia”

o   Make Puppets

o   While they are coloring read read a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (J 398.2)  This is the most harmless and concise version I found:  http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/gilgamesh.html Have children narrate the story back to you.  I was surprised to find my boys listen better when their hands are occupied. Their narrations were much more complete.  I will keep that in mind when reading in the future.

• MAP TREK:  Map #3 (Mesopotamia) Include possible locations of the Tower of Babel.

• While they do map work read about Sargon and discuss similarities to bible stories. http://history-world.org/sargon_the_great.htm

• Mark Timeline

We finished the week with a MUSIC study of Peter and the Wolf (I chose the version narrated by Captain Kangaroo and Conducted by Strokowski). Before starting the music, I read them a brief biorography and summary from this site while they made finger puppets from this site. Then we began to listen to the narrated version of the piece. The idea was to use the puppets as we heard each character's instrument(s). However, we ended up making hand motions for each as we went along and bouncing around the room doing the different hand motions. The boys want to continue listening to this piece, so we will mix it up with listening to the narrated and the non-narated version through the next week and see how well they do as narrators.

As an alternative you could watch the old Disney version on Youtube. However, I think it best to just have them listen the first time so they can form their own vision of the piece.