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The Learning Basket

You Are Your Child's First and Best Teacher

Staying with the Nativity Story

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I’m participating in the Keeping Christ in Christmas Blog Carnival, hosted by Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints, Truly Rich Mom and Arma Dei: Equipping Catholic Families. We’ll be sharing different ways, tips, stories and real-life experiences that will help us focus on Jesus as the Reason for the Christmas season. Please scroll down to the end of the post to see the list of carnival entries.

Christmas is a holiday that can easily lose its meaning for people. Little ones, especially, can come to believe that the season is all about them – their wants, their desires – when they see their mountain of presents under a well-decorated Christmas tree. (In our case, the mountain is from family and friends.)

As a mother to two wee ones, I wish to veer away from the commercialism of the season and “keep Christ in Christmas.” I want my children to grow up with their eyes and hearts on the real reason of this wonderful celebration.

It starts with the nativity story

Little kids like good stories, and nothing is more beautiful than the story of the birth of Jesus. From the moment the angel Gabriel appears to Mary up to when the Wise Men trudge to where the Holy Infant lays, children find every detail exciting and enthralling.

By letting this wondrous narrative live in our children’s consciousness right from their earliest years, we are already imparting to them that Christmas is about Jesus. This will be our foundation and  baseline for deeper discussions in the future as our children grow older.

DIY Nativity Play Set

 

Some ways to help young children soak in the story

Read Christmas books together

We just started a new family tradition of unwrapping one Christmas book every day from the first of December until Christmas Eve. I collected our books within one year, choosing mostly those that are about the Nativity or the traditions surrounding it. Our favorites so far are those by author Tomie dePaola, who tells such charming stories while effortlessly passing on information about the Catholic faith.

 

Make your child her own nativity play set 

I bought a cardboard Nativity Set, pictured above, from Booksale. My daughter just loved coloring and assembling the Holy Family, shepherds, Three Kings, animals, and the stable. The set now proudly sits on our Jesse Tree table and gets played with all the time.

Here are some links for your child’s own nativity play set which you can do together:

 

Color Advent coloring pages

Being always on the lookout for Christmas-related activities, I found an activity book featuring Bible characters called My Heavenly Helper. It goes so well with the readings for our Jesse Tree.

I found some links for you to download and enjoy doing the same with your children:
  • Ministry to Children – a free printable set containing one coloring page for each week of Advent
  • DLTK – I love this free Christmas Story Advent Coloring Book featuring different scenes in the story
http://www.dltk-bible.com/advent/index.htm

Image from DLTK

Dramatize

Bring the story of Jesus to life by dramatizing it! You can do your own mini-play complete with costumes and dialogue, or you can use your nativity set to re-enact the holy birth. It’s a fun way to get to know the story intimately and will surely stay in our children’s memories until adulthood.

Staying with the Nativity Story and keeping our focus on it will help our families keep Christ in Christmas. The mountain of presents under our trees may give our children temporary happiness, but the joy they will receive by rooting them in our faith will last a lifetime.

 

Here are the links to the other blog carnival participants. I hope you’ll take the time to visit them and leave a comment on their posts! 🙂 The list will be updated throughout the day, so please do come back and check on them. God bless us all!

 

Make magic!

About The Learning Basket

TLB is composed of two moms who love to read and are homeschoolers.