Jesus Feeds the 5,000

We did this as a Bible lesson a few weeks back.
I read her the story from the Bible about Jesus feeding the 5,000 in the book of Matthew.  Then made a quick storyboard.  By quick, I mean I literally grabbed some paper and color pencils and sketched as I told her the story.  She was interested,...so I went with it.

Then as she colored the story board, I cut out fish and loaves of bread out of scrap construction paper.  As the kids played pretend with the fish and loaves, pretending to break and multiply the food, I traced a few large sized fish on large paper. 

I took some huge white paper and drew two identical fish.  I have cheap-o watercolor palettes that I use for painting.  They are those cheap white trays with the circles of colors with the cheap brushes.

Laying the fishes out and watercolors, the kids painted their fishes.

While the painted fish dried, I made fishing rods with my wooden spoons and some wooden clips.  And they played "fishing" with each other.  This is not part of the story, but they loved it!

Once the fish dried later in the day, I cut the two matching fishes out and stapled them together leaving a large end open. Of course the painted sides are facing out...
Then the kids helped me stuff their fish with paper towels.   I closed up the fish with more staples and attached a string with the last staple.

This was a super fun lesson that incorporated Bible learning, an Art project and some pretend play time.  There was no pre-planning involved at all.  During our morning reading time, ( I do my quiet time while they sit in another room and read books) I happened to be in the book of Matthew and decided to tell them about it.  I always tend to think that if I do not have anything planned for the day or week...any kind of learning or project will flop.  Not true!!!
Actually my most fun learning activities with them have been like this...totally improv!
Of course all I described above was done all through out the day.  But it made it more fun to make the entire day around this story. 
I did find one of the fish yesterday with it's tail cut off and it's "insides" of shredded paper towel laying around the house.  So I hung the lonely one left on the fridge until I find a more safe place.....