Jesus feeds the 5000

The project for today is a printable basket with fish & bread!  

Jesus took a boat to a deserted place to be by Himself. But the crowds of people heard about it, and they followed Him on foot from the cities. Probably as the people went looking to find Jesus, they passed towns and more and more people gathered with them to find Him. Jesus has been teaching a couple years, so people want to see Him. Luke tells us there were about 5,000 men, so add the woman and children, there were probably over 15,000 people all together.

When Jesus went out, He saw the crowds and was stirred by sympathy for them. He went to them and healed the sick.

Later in the day, probably 3-5 o’clock in the afternoon, the Disciples came to Jesus and told Him that they were in a deserted place, and it is late.

We should send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding villages, which were probably several miles away, and buy themselves some food.  Remember, they didn’t hop in their nice air-conditioned cars and drive to a restaurant!

But Jesus told them that they didn’t need to send them away, just give them something to eat. They asked if they should go buy 200 denarii worth of bread, which is about 8 months wages back then.

This basket was at Hobby Lobby 

and is perfect for this Bible lesson!

They told Jesus that there were only 5 Barley loaves of bread and 2 fish. The bread in Jesus’ time is not like ours. They are small, round, about 4 inches, and about ½ inch thick. They were poor people's bread, but still good food. The fish was probably to put on the bread, like sardines or tuna. (From John’s account and the way he worded the fish) It was enough for the boy that gave the food to the Disciples, but not enough for this crowd. Jesus said: “Bring them here to Me.” 

Jesus told the crowd to sit on the grass in groups. It’s Spring, so the grass is nice to be on. They sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. The men sat apart in groups and the women sat together in groups with the children. This made it easy to divide up the food they would need. He took the 5 loaves of bread and the 2 fish and He looked up into heaven, and praying to God, He gave thanks for the food and broke it. 

This is a great example of praying and thanking God for our food before we eat. Then Jesus handed it out to the people. He did the same with the fish.

When everyone had enough to eat, Jesus told the Disciples to collect the extra food because they didn’t want to waste anything. After the Disciples collected all the food, there were 12 baskets left over! Remember there are 12 Disciples and there were 12 baskets of food left over. Read Bible verse: So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them.

Now after seeing this miracle, more people believed in Jesus.

Scripture: 

Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:4-13

I used this worksheet as the application to discuss Jesus praying, Who He prayed to and things to pray for. Click here to download.

This a basket you can print for this Bible lesson.

You will need to print 2 copies of the basket itself, and 1 copy of the bread/fish page. Once everything is printed and cut out, fold on all the dark brown lines toward the inside. Then, I stapled each of the two baskets on the bottom, like in the above photo. Then, I used Aleene's Tacky Glue on the 2 small white tabs to put the 2 parts of the basket together. You can glue or tape the bottom together once the sides are glued together.

You have choices for the handle. You don't even need to use it if you don't want to. The first photo shows one handle. You can glue or staple the handle to the basket. I prefer not to use staples where kids might be touching. So, I added 2 handles on the sides. I used an awl to poke the holes and I used brads to attach the handles, plus they are moveable. Again, you can glue, staple or tape them on.

This is the finished basket. You can use napkins, a paper towel, fabric or whatever you want to pretty up the inside. I used a 12x12 piece of cardstock, cut into a 6x6 square and then I crumbled it up. Once I opened it back up, it looked real nice inside the basket. Once you add the fish and the bread it is finished. You can use different fish and bread (see photos further down) and not print these.

You can print this project here.

You can print the worksheet here.

Click here to download the visuals.

Click here to download the pictures to color.



These visuals are updated as shown above.

Click here to download the visuals.

All visuals are not shown.

Click here to download the pictures to color.

(These are the same as the visuals but are black & white.)

Bible Verse:  Luke 9:17 

There are 3 lapbook printables for today's lesson. You can print them here: 

Sick   Food    Jesus

This is the printable for today's lapbook worksheet. The kids will cut out Jesus and the boy and glue them onto the background. You can print it here.

You can find all the download links for the Life of Jesus lapbooks and the lapbook worksheets here.

 

Project Option: I used small baskets with a piece of cloth. I gave them the fish & bread to take home. The fish are so much cuter in person! The kids really had fun!

You can find the fish here. Of course, they love gummi fish or Swedish fish, too!

 

Also the 'bread' was found at Wal Mart, World Table, I used the original rice cracker type. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.

Used by permission.