Loaves and Fishes and blackbird puppets: 1/10/10

Theme:  Equality (sharing)

We began our morning with free time to play, or draw, and waiting for any last minute arrivals.  After about 5-10 minutes I gathered the children in a circle on the floor. There were 7 children, between the ages of 3-10.  I planned to read two stories to the group, the first one taken from “My Very First Bible”  (Dorling Kindersley Ltd. pub), of  Jesus feeding the 5000, or the “Loaves and Fishes” as it is called in this children’s Bible.  First I brought out a basket and a packet of cookie/biscuits, and put three of the cookies into the basket.  I handed the basket to one of the children, then asked the rest,

“What if I told you that these snacks were for this person, and only him, and the rest of you would not get any?  How would you feel?”

They gave various responses, boiling down to “jealous, mad, not fair.”  Then I asked the group what they would expect me to do differently.  They would have expected me to give everyone the same amount, or the same choice of what to eat.  Next I asked what we could do with the number of cookies we had in the basket if there were not enough to go around.  They quickly thought of breaking what we had into pieces and sharing.

After this brief discussion we read the story of the “Loaves and Fishes” and talked about the little boy sharing what he had, even when it did not seem to be enough for everyone.  The kids had a number of good ideas as to what the story showed and taught us.  We followed this story with a minute of silence.

Next I introduced another story, “Tico and the Golden Wings” by Leo Lionni.  The children listened to the story of a wingless bird, Tico, who wished for golden wings, then had the wish granted.  As a result, Tico’s friends assumed that he felt superior to them, and left him.  Tico begins to share his “riches” by giving away one golden feather at a time, to people in need.  Finally he is left with beautiful black wings when all of the golden feathers have been given away.  He returns to his friends who welcome him back, but Tico carries with him a new knowledge of  how he is the same and how he is different from the others.

The story was a jumping off point for our craft for the day, making movable bird puppets, black like Tico.

bird puppets

• The kids drew their own bird bodies onto black cardstock, plus two wings each.
• I helped the youngest two draw and cut their shapes out.
• Linda joined me at this point and helped with poking holes (we used an awl), and putting tiny brads through the three pieces.
• Last we glued the birds onto wooden tongue depressors for the kids to hold.
• The other idea (from one of the kids!) is to add gold paper or paint to one side of the wings, so that the puppets can be used in two ways (or some of the puppets might have more gold or black showing).

My thought was that this project could be continued and turned into a puppet show on the next Sunday, if the teachers would like to do that.

*Just as an aside, we didn’t have time to do our pen-pal letter, but I will bring the items we need this week to do after Meeting.

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