From the Cradle to the Cross: Jesus Feeds the 5,000

Okay, we're almost all better around here, so we had a little more fun with this lesson.  :)

Jesus feeds the 5,000.  I know, I'm a dork, but I've actually been planning this one for a while because I had a really fun idea that I was super excited about.  Now you're about to get a glimpse into my terrible luck, but I still think it's a really fun idea!

When Isaac woke up we read the story from several children's Bibles and then made 5 loaves of bread while we waited for Silas to wake up.  Okay, well actually we took 5 frozen globs of roll dough and pretended they were loaves of bread.  We set them out on a tray so they could thaw and rise for the morning.  I cooked them while we ate lunch and we dipped them in honey as a treat for dessert when we got done.  It was delicious!

Okay, so back to the morning.  When Silas woke up we gathered up some stuffed animals and made a "crowd" in our living room.  We got them all situated and while the boys ate their breakfast, I got things ready for the lesson.

I bought this fun basket at Hobby Lobby for $1.99 that I thought looked really Bible-times-ish.  I filled it with croutons (garlic and cheese flavored, yum!) and some Pepperidge Farm goldfish (yum, again!  Am I the only adult who really likes these?  I have been told I have the palate of a 2 year old, but I really do find them quite tasty.  Anyway...).

I placed a folded kleenex at the top and placed 5 little croutons and 2 goldfish neatly on top.

While the boys ate breakfast I told them about the fun activity we were going to do, all the while dreaming of the how shocked Isaac was going to be when I slyly reached below the kleenex to "multiply" the food and feed the entire stuffed animal crowd.  When Isaac finished his Cheerios he jumped down from the table, and grabbed the basket as he said, "I want to carry dis."

And yep, you guessed it.  This is what happened.

So much for the amazing trick.  And you would not believe how close I was to letting out an annoyed little yelp.  But I had just posted this and I thought of it right as I was about to say something.  (I didn't; however, think of it later when they splashed water all over the bathroom I had just scrubbed... but I did ask for forgiveness.  :)

We still had fun with the lesson.  I set the little basket back up and as I told the story, I passed out the fish and croutons.  After I had done about half the crowd, I said, "Wait!  Weren't there only 5 loaves and 2 fish?!?  Let's count how many we have here!"  As we counted, I pointed out that Jesus had done a miracle in the story and even though they just started out with a few, they didn't ever run out and in fact had 12 baskets of leftovers!

Silas pretty much ate all the croutons.  Yep, the ones off the living room floor that had previously been dumped on the kitchen floor.  Does that make me a bad mom?  I hope not, but that kind of thing may explain why we were all sick last week!  ;)

I wasn't sure that Isaac really understood the idea of a "miracle" until he retold the story to my dad almost perfectly a little later in his own words!  Hearing him retell stories from Scripture seriously makes my heart melt.  He later told it to my mom and Matt too.  He doesn't always retain so much, but he did this time!

Next we did a little fish craft that I found here.  The boys colored pictures of the story that I found here, here and here while I cut the pieces out for our craft.

Cute little dot to dot fish.  We got lots of counting practice in with this story!

The craft has a color version and a black and white version you can print out.  Since they had just spend 10 minutes coloring and they aren't the hugest fans of that anyway, I printed out the pre-colored version and we got to gluing our own little cd fish.  If you don't have cds laying around, this DLTK had quite a few fish crafts and I also really liked the one with the paper plate.  If you wanted to make it more of a preschool lesson, this site had ideas for things you could do with letters and counting centered around fish.

We had fun talking about this story off and on throughout our day.  One thing I try to do as we discuss the story is bring it back to the gospel.  (You can use this printable for ideas on various stories.)  We talked about the miracle that Jesus does in our heart when he forgives our sins and how just like he had love and compassion for the hungry people in the crowd, he had love and compassion for us by dying for our sins.

I love feeling better and having energy to plan things... even if they do get spilled all over the floor!  :)