We did this object lesson for one of our lessons on family.  I bought a variety of cheap flowers from Walmart and used them to illustrate the concept of a family.

We talked about how all of the flowers look different — different sizes, shapes, colors, lengths — but they are all still flowers.  Just like my bouquet of flowers has a lot of variety, so do families.  Families can have different ages, hair color, skin color, likes and dislikes, moms, dads, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

I happened to have a very wilted flower from my Mother’s Day bouquet which I also used to talk about the concept of death and how sometimes we lose members of our family (like my poor, wilted carnation).

I used the single flower below to show how we can also add new members to our family, such as a new baby, adoption, remarriage, step-parent or step-sibling, blended families, etc.  I wanted to make sure that we talked about all types of families and that the kids felt assured that their family was loved by God, even if it didn’t fit the “typical” model.