Getting Started

Choose the activity that best fits your family’s interests, age levels, and availability. Or, do multiple if you’re having fun! Words in bold are for you to say out loud: feel free to paraphrase, if you prefer.

Activity 1

Food Collage

Kids on the younger end will really enjoy this…

Provide magazines for your child/children to find and cut out pictures of different types of food. Then, together, glue these pictures to pieces of construction paper or paper plates. As you’re working together, say:

Today we’ll be reading about a time when a lot of people were crowded around Jesus and were very hungry! Jesus and His disciples needed to feed them, but they didn’t have enough money or enough food for everyone. We’ll find out what happened in just a minute.

Either do the next Hook or skip straight to the story. Your choice.

Activity 2

One Loaf

Set a loaf of bread at the center of your family (wherever you will be doing this
Hook — at the kitchen table, on a coffee table in your family room, on a table on
the deck, etc). Ask:

How many people do you think this loaf of bread would feed for lunch? (Allow for answers). Based upon your answer, how many loaves do you think it would take to feed 5,000 people? (Allow for answers. If your child/children said that one loaf would feed 10 people, help them do the math. Pull out a calculator and do the multiplication to show them that would mean it would take 500 loaves to feed 5,000 people). What about 5,000 men, plus their wives and children? (Allow for answers, knowing that we’re probably talking well over double the number. Not every man was married, but many of the married men likely had multiple children. We’re talking a LOT of bread here). We have one loaf of bread. What would we need to do to have 500 or 1,000 loaves here on this table? (Allow for answers). We would need to go to the store and buy more bread, which would cost us anywhere from $1,000 ($2.00 per loaf if there were 5,000 mouths to feed) to $4,000 ($4.00 per loaf if there were 10,000 mouths to feed). That’s a lot of money! (Pause for a bit to let that amount sink in). If we didn’t have that amount of money, could we do something else to get that much bread? (Allow for answers). We could borrow bread from other people. Do you think our friends and neighbors have enough bread to provide 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 loaves of bread? (Talk about that for a moment). What about this — do you think we could just make more loaves of bread appear on the table beside this one? (Allow time for answers. Hopefully, you’re child/children say that’s not possible. If you have a “funny” kid, have them try to turn that one loaf into more). Today, we’re going to read about a time when Jesus and His disciples were with a lot of people. These people were hungry! Jesus needed to give them food. Let’s find out how He did it.