In addition to doing Advent with my own kids, I am teaching Advent to the 3-year-old class at church! I love doing special lessons like this and I thought it would be really neat for each child to learn to retell the Christmas story with their own Nativity set.
My inspiration for this craft came from Wooden Doll Nativity and How to Make a Wooden DIY Nativity Set. I wanted to use little wooden figures because they seemed so much more durable in toddler hands than the various paper Nativity patterns I found online! I found the wooden figures on Amazon (I've heard they're available other places, and might be less expensive, but we needed them quickly) and we used the Apple Barrel Acrylic Paint.
Since I am working with 3-year-olds, I did a test… And if you paint the entire figure a solid color, it is easy to paint a face on after! (The coloring of the photo is a little off, but you'll see on the other characters that they turned out ok also.)
Once all the characters were painted, I let them dry for about 10 minutes, and then I added the faces:
Then, in order to differentiate the characters, I added some felt clothing for Mary and Joseph and Jesus (well, Jesus' swaddling cloths):
The wise men received capes, and the shepherds staffs (made from pipe cleaners):
Elmer's Glue did not work, so I used non-toxic wood glue. The catch is that it takes a long time to dry and I don't think the kids will have patience, so I found little ties and after putting a dab of glue, tied the accessory in place. Once the glue dried, it kept the clothes and accessories attached well so they didn't fall off when the kids played!
For the stable, we used cardboard boxes and glued in backgrounds. These were the two I found via Google that were my favorite: Nativity Stable Panel and Bethlehem Manger Backdrop.
Here are some samples of the kids' Marys and angels! So far we've only done Mary, Joseph, Gabriel and the baby Jesus, but they are having such a great time and take the activity very seriously.
Along with painting the characters, we learned that the angel Gabriel told Mary, "You will bear a son," and that Gabriel told Joseph, "You will call Him Jesus." My hope is that they'll be able to retell the Christmas story simply with their characters!
