Man with four friends craft

Man with four friends craft is ideal for young children to make with minimal help. Sometimes it’s nice to make a craft that you can also use for telling and retelling the Bible story and this craft does just that as you make the man and his mat!

The story is from Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12 and Luke 5:17-26.

Man with four friends story idea

Our story begins in a house with a flat roof and some steps up the side. It had windows and a door. I wonder what could be happening in this house? We are not told who lived in this home, (show the house) but when Jesus arrived lots of people went to the house to meet him. They squashed themselves inside. There was hardly any room. The house was full!

In another part of town there was a man who couldn’t walk. He lay on his bed. (show the man on his bed) He needed the help of his friends everyday. Let’s count the friends together as they come out of the story bag – 1,2,3,4

His friends wanted him to see Jesus.

So, they picked him up and carried him to the house where Jesus was – carefully, carefully they carried their friend through the town to the house where Jesus was…

…they believed Jesus could help their friend.

When they arrived at the house they could not get in the front door because of the crowd. They didn’t give up!

They carried him up the outside stairs and onto the roof – slowly, slowly – carefully, carefully…

…they made a hole in the roof, then – slowly, slowly, carefully, carefully they lowered him down in front of Jesus!

When Jesus saw that they really believed he could help the man he said, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Some people in the house didn’t believe that Jesus could forgive the wrong people do. So, Jesus said to the man, “So that you can be sure that I can forgive sin, get up, pick up your mat and go home.” Straight away and really quickly he got up, rolled up his mat, and walked home!

All the people in the house were amazed!!

‘We never saw anything like this!’ They said to one another.

All you need to make the man with four friends craft..

For the craft we made the man’s mat by decorating sugar paper with large pieces of tissue paper and then we made a man – on one side he was happy and on the other side he was sad. We used fabric for clothes and wool for hair.

People shapes – if you can get skin coloured shapes rather than bright white
Yarn for hair
Fabric for clothes
Crayons
Sugar paper for the man’s mat – you want to be able to roll and unroll this
Tissue paper

When telling the story I pretended to carry the man up the steps to the roof of a house and then lower him down to the feet of Jesus. The paper mat was rolled up as part of the story too.

The people shapes are from Baker Ross via Amazon. This is an affiliate link – if you click and purchase you won’t be charged any extra but I will receive a small commission to help fund the blog – so a big thank you if you support in this way. It’s much appreciated.

This is a short video of this story for young children to enjoy!