"Ancestor's Tale for Kids"
(a.k.a. "River of Life") Celebrating
the evolutionary journey of life and our own ancestry
written and assembled by Connie Barlow (2009) based on Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins (2004)
www.TheGreatStory.org/ancestors-tale.html
Two distinct experiential scripts have been assembled, based on the 2004 science book by Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale. Dawkins characterizes his book as "an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past", and he suggests that in this journey "We shall be pilgrims, then, sharing fellowship ever more inclusively with other pilgrim bands, which also have been swelling on their own way to their rendezvous with us."
Amazingly, it takes ONLY 40 such rendezvous for humans to meet chimpanzees, other apes, monkeys, other primates, other placental mammals, and so on back through the entire journey of life. Both versions of the group experience below have this 40-part structure, and can easily be adapted for groups ranging from 12 to 80 participants, and for virtually all age groups and mixed age groups.
Highly recommended for CHILDREN . . .
♦ 1. "The River of Life: An Evolutionary Journey" - This is the easiest and most child-friendly of the activities within the "Ancestor's Tale" genre and the only one suitable for KIDS.
HERE IS HOW IT PLAYS OUT: Imagine every species alive on Earth today designating a single ambassador to journey back through time, following their evolutionary lineage. Group by group, the lineages of the ambassadors begin to merge, as they come upon shared ancestors. We can take this journey together by beginning as the human ambassador, who encounters other lineages merging on the same journey back in time. We can picture this journey as drops of water flowing down a watershed, becoming rivulets, then streams, then bigger and bigger tributaries, as they all eventually come together in The River of Life, flowing toward The Ocean of Origin.
This is the only version suitable for children and for families, but it is also delightful for adults. It is the only version that has been developed with a strong visual emphasis (digital slide show) and with a song. WATCH CONNIE teach this program live . . .
Click on image left to watch Part 1 of a (two-part) 90-minute VIDEO of Connie presenting this program for children in 2011 at a Unitarian Universalist church in Georgia, USA.
After the video starts playing, we recommend you click on the YouTube button in the lower-right part of the picture screen. That will take you to the video's full YouTube page. From there, you can read the long text caption that summarizes the highlights. On the YouTube page, click on the gray "Show more" directly below the truncated text.
Notice that the text summary includes a full TABLE OF CONTENTS with linked timestops (in blue), which you can click to advance instantly to that portion of the video.
The Part 2 VIDEO of Ancestor's Tale for Kids opens at confluence #11. Two minutes into that program a child asks why some people don't believe in evolution. Watch Connie's imaginative response!
All SLIDES and SCRIPTS Connie uses in the above video are freely available for download:
To download, right-click (PC) or control+click (Mac)
DOWNLOAD PARTICIPANT Scripts (40 total) in PDF (15.5 MB) Note: You cannot view this onscreen; only DOWNLOAD. Be patient; it will take a long time to download.
DOWNLOAD LEADER Scripts (40 total) in PDF (41.4 MB) Note: You cannot view this onscreen; only DOWNLOAD. Be patient; it will take a long time to download.
Note: All 40 confluences in the journey back to the origin of life cannot be accomplished in one sitting. Connie highly recommends that teachers/parents who would like to present this program to kids break it into 3 to 5 sessions. It thus can be the ideal content component of a 3 to 5 day summer camp.
After the completion of the guessing-game slide (center) for one or more "confluences" of relatives joining our time travel journey (Confluence 18, 19, and 20) in the slide here, the leader invites children to sing another verse of a tunefully simple song (capitalized syllables get the 1-2-3 emphasis).
Above: Connie Barlow guiding "River of Life" in Sunday School at C3 Exchange, Spring Lake MI, 2010
♦ 2. "Greet the Concestors" - In this version, the focus shifts from our fellow ambassadors (species alive today) to what the shared ancestor ("concestor") looked like whenever we merge with another stream of pilgrims taking their own journey back through time. We also focus on what body parts our lineage of life gains or loses at each of the 40 "rendezvous points." This is a very simple script with no visual component and no song. It is not intended for children. But it is excellent supplemental information for the teacher/leader to study in preparation for guiding "The River of Life" journey above, or for offering as a special project to a scientifically gifted student. You can download the simple program/scripts in PDF (420 kb)
3. "Ancestors Meditation" - This reading (created to accompany a Samhain autumn ritual) by Jon Cleland-Host, is not derived from the science in Richard Dawkins's book. It is a much faster way to survey the flow of ancestral life forms and situations without focussing on the 40 points of confluence. Click here to view or download in PDF.
4. "River of Life BEADS" - A fabulous supplement to this experience, especially in a school setting, is to use the 40 confluence points as the basis for making GREAT STORY BEADS. For this purpose, the teacher would provide, in addition to colorful beads, alphabet beads, so that kids could choose the bead "C" for the confluence with chimpanzees, "G" for gorilla, and so on, if actual beads of those animals are not available. To learn about great story beads in general, click HERE.
REQUESTS: (1) If you use this curriculum, please contact the author and let her know what elements worked well and where improvements should be made. (2) If this curriculum has made a difference with your students, please ask your organization to make a donation.
