We make stained glass gingerbread every year because they’re so pretty and smell wonderful. Use this tutorial from our archive of Christmas play ideas to make them. They look beautiful hanging on the Christmas tree with the tree lights shining through, and also look great hanging in the window.
QUICK RESOURCE >> Download your ready-made Nativity Unit here
This is one of our favourite Christmas crafts: a paper plate angel.
Follow these instructions from our Christmas play archive to get your angel shape and then add colour, stickers and lots of glitter to decorate. Just right for sitting on top of your Christmas tree.
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
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
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!
This article is one of NurtureStore’s easy Christmas crafts for children and part of our Christmas activities and crafts.
This is a lovely Christmas craft for toddlers and preschoolers, as it’s so easy to do they can make it with just a little grown up help.
To make a loo roll Father Christmas:
Take a toilet roll tube and paint it or wrap it in red paper.
Cut out a circle for his head and draw on his face.
Add a red triangle for his hat.
Add a cotton wool beard.
You can use him as a decoration or for some small-world Christmas roll playing.
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
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
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!
This article is one of NurtureStore’s easy Christmas crafts for children and part of our Christmas activities and crafts.
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: paper rolls.
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.
See our full index of Christmas activities, lesson plans and crafts for even more great ideas.
These homemade selection boxes make great presents children can make and give to their siblings and friends as a Christmas gift. They’re also perfect as a school fundraising idea: all the children can make one and you can then sell them at your Christmas fair, which is what we’re doing with ours.
To make them: we filled a pint sized plastic beaker with some goodies: chocolate, sweets, stickers, small toys. We used a disc of cellophane to cover the top and held it in place with an elastic band. Then you need to get creative and decorate them.
I wanted to let the children do as much of it as possible by themselves so L made a Christmas tree. I cut out two tree shapes from green card and she helped to fasten them around the beaker with staples. Then it was over to her to add the decorations – stickers, foil snowflakes and glitter put on with glue. She drew a fairy to sit on the top, added some extra glitter for good measure and wrapped gift-wrap ribbon around as tinsel.
B made this beautiful angel. She used wrapping paper for the dress, fastened with sticky tape at the back and with some foil snowflake shapes and glitter to embellish. The face is drawn on white card with wool hair and the wings are made from a paper cake doily. She does look rather angelic, don’t you think?
The children at school had also come up with some wonderful designs:
– cover the beaker in cotton wool and make a snowman
– turn it into a chimney with Father Christmas’ feet poking out of the top
– lay the beaker on the side and make a cave for a polar bear to live in
I love these homemade selection boxes as a creative way for your children to make their own presents. If you come up with any other designs, do let us know!
This article is one of NurtureStore’s easy Christmas crafts for children and part of our Christmas activities and crafts.
Do you send out Thank You cards for the presents your children receive at Christmas? It’s something I like to encourage mine to do.
Today we’ve had a snowman production line on the go using our favourite material of the moment – cotton wool.
You might have seen the earlier Snowman Pictures we made, or the shepherd’s nativity scene, but this time we went for a flat cotton pad rather than balls.
We used:
:: white card
:: 2 cotton wool pads per snowman
:: black and orange felt tips
:: PVA glue and some silver sequins as snowflakes (left over from the Dove of Peace decorations).
I think the pictures are pretty much self-explanatory but I would say drawing on the cotton wool is a little tricky but easily solved if you stick with a ‘dot’ design.
My 3 year old managed hers all by herself so it’s a nice craft for preschoolers as well as older children.
Don’t you think they look jolly?
See our full index of Christmas activities, lesson plans and crafts for even more great ideas.