Jesus Feeds 5000 Craft – AWANA Cubbies Bear Hug #20

Welcome to my AWANA Cubbies series. Today I get to bring you my “Jesus Feeds 5000 Craft – AWANA Cubbies Bear Hug #20.” Whether you are a Cubbies leader, Sunday School teacher, Christian educator or a parent aiming to teach biblical lessons to their children, this craft should be perfect to teach the miracle of Jesus feeding so many with just five loaves of bread and two fish. For those of you just checking in, my church AWANA Cubbies leaders asked me to create and prep all the crafts for this year. I loved the idea of contributing in this way. You can hover over my “crafts” tab to find my other lessons in the series. These correspond with the AWANA program but of course can be used in any setting.

For each “basket” you will need two paper plates. The flimsier, inexpensive plates you can buy at the Dollar Tree will work great.

I put the two plates together and then cut out half of the center circle. I folded the plates in half to make it easier to cut. Again, if you are doing this for AWANA or a Sunday school class, you should prep these all ahead of time. You can find a helper to volunteer to prep the craft for you. You will need two cut paper plates per child.

The plates should like these once they are all cut out. These are the two halves of your basket.

You will want to take the paper off a brown crayon. I used a woven table to create the texture. I rubbed the crayon in one direction, rotated the plate and got the cross hatch. You could create this texture with a basket, placemat or I know my church has a bunch of woven trivets, which is what they will use for the AWANA craft. Perhaps you could find something like that too. I placed the cut paper plates out flat on the textured surface, but I wanted to make sure the plates, when sandwiched together, would create a pouch to carry things.

Once both of the plates are covered with the textured crayon, you can staple along the bottom portion of the basket.

Fill each basket with “fishes” and “loaves.” I represented these with fish crackers and Wheat Thins. I chose Wheat Thins because they don’t break into crumbs easily. You can represent the number of fish and loaves Jesus started with, but I liked the thought of having the food multiplied after the miracle.

The kids will love carrying their “baskets” with “fish and loaves” home with them. It will be a great reminder of Jesus’ miracle of taking 5 loaves and 2 fish and feeding 5000 people.