QUICK RESOURCE >> Download your ready-made Nativity Unit here
Do you have a nativity scene your children can play with? Advent begins today and I know my girls will spend December dressing up as kings, reading Christmas story picture books and generally bursting into a round of Away In A Manger at any opportunity.
We have a beautiful nativity scene which decorates our sitting room each year but it is too delicate for the girls to play with, so this year we decided to make a version the girls can use. And you’ll probably guess what are figures are made of: toilet roll tubes (which does seem rather inappropriate for such holy characters but I hope we don’t offend.)
The figures were made by wrapping fabric and card around the tubes and glueing into place: a very simple design the girls can make with just a little adult help, and giving them their own nativity to play with to their hearts content.
Download your ready-made Nativity Unit
Download the Play Academy’s ready-made Nativity Unit and you’ll have everything you need to lead a set of activities to introduce your children to the Nativity story.
This Unit includes artist-drawn puppets/colour-in nativity scene characters and printable Bible verse cards, that your children can use year after year.
In this Nativity teaching unit your children can:
:: learn about the Nativity and create their own Nativity book or small world scene using colour-in puppet / nativity scene characters
:: learn about Mary and Joseph’s journey, and explore junk modelling
:: learn about the shepherds role, and explore loose parts
:: learn about Jesus’ birth
:: learn about the three wise men, and complete their book / re-tell the story in their small world
Bonus Nativity thematic unit printables
The Play Academy’s thematic units come with practical printables that make the lessons more engaging for your children and easier for you to teach.
No need to go searching for printables to accompany your lessons, they’re all included when you download your chosen unit.
In this Nativity Unit you’ll receive these bonus printables:
:: My Nativity Story book to write, colour and complete to tell the Nativity story
:: a set of artist-drawn My Nativity Puppets to colour, cut out and use to re-cap and act out the Nativity story
:: Nativity Vocabulary Cards to recap and consolidate learning
:: Nativity Bible Verse Cards to read, narrate your own acting out of the story, and perhaps to memorise
How to download this Nativity thematic unit
You can download this unit along with over 50 more from NurtureStore’s Play Academy.
If you are already of the Play Academy, you can download this unit straight away from our Library here.
If you are not yet a member, find out more and choose your first unit here. Your teaching is about to get a whole lot easier!
Very cute – and clever!
Nice idea! We have lots of tissue rolls loitering around=)
how cute! Good idea, we also made a junk play nativity although we mix it up with clay modeling:)
Very cute! I think I should make something similar.. because this is what Christmas is about isn`t it.
We have actually made five elves and a Santa out of loo rolls.. This is our Christmas story 🙂 Well we have to make up the story first.
When my daughter started school I saw how important Nativity is over here.. or is it just a tradition? Back in Estonia we used to have just little winter stories (forest, animals, snow, Father Christmas with his elves… ).
Cute! One of my friends daughters made a similar nativity set out of toilet paper rolls while the rest of the family was off decorating the house for Christmas! And she left them in the bathroom for all to enjoy… of course, you HAVE to leave that decoration up! These will be great for playing with. The store bought ones are usually too fragile for play!
You know me… I LOVE EVERYTHING made out of loo rolls! Well done your girls! Love them!!!
maggy
(and thanks as always for linking up to Kids Get Crafty!!!)
Thanks for all your kind comments. Mermaid, of course for some people the nativity is at the heart of Christmas but I think for many it is more about the tradition. The school nativity play is something everyone would remember taking part in when they were a child.
Such a darling idea! I would love to feature this activity and photo on my preschool website… if that is okay with you… I would give you credit for it, of course. My site is http://www.prekfun.com I’m currently working on the Christmas theme on my site. Thank you for sharing this cute activity… your daughters did a fabulous job on the nativity scene.
they are gorgeous
We have a fisher-price ‘little people’ nativity scene for just this reason (so the kiddos can actually play with it). But I love your idea – and I bet they had fun making them 🙂 xxx
Yes, we have been playing with toilet rolls for the last few weeks ourselves. I am thinking I will save this for my advent calender activities for next year, as we are going through the Christmas Crazies here at the moment and I don’t think Princess would be repsonsive enough to the story to get why we were making a nativity scene. If only people would stop feeding her coffee at every meal, maybe I would have better luck! (j/k, she doesn’t even like the smell of coffee, I just don’t know why she has been so hyper for so long!)
Great idea to reuse scraps!
Thank you for linking up to http://www.thetshirtdiaries.com
How cute! Love this idea! Will have to see if my boys would like to make this Nativity set, as it is such a nice Christmas project.
Thanks for sharing. Hope that you will pop by my blog.
Colleen:)