December seems to be a season for coloring here. Every day we open an Advent activity at Activity Village, and Anna selects a couple of things to color. Suddenly she loves to color by number (she used to hate it with a passion) and she was also interested in nativity coloring pages. We had a lot of discussions about different characters as she was coloring them. She knows the nativity story, but it’s not reinforced all the time as religious households, so a lot of her questions and comments really cracked me up: Why does baby Jesus have straw in his baby carrier? Why do they all have hangers (haloes did look like they were supposed to be used for hanging these figures) over their heads? Where are Mary’s legs? Why does she wear such a long dress? Why do angels have arms and wings?
I tried to answer her questions to the best of my ability, and we also read a book telling Nativity story – An Angel Came to Nazareth by Maggie Kneen. The illustrations are gorgeous, and the style looked familiar. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Maggie Kneen also illustrated The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston. The story is not exactly following the Bible, since it focuses mostly on the journey to Bethlehem, but it covers basic facts. It’s really a beautiful book, and it gets 5 stars from both of us.
I helped Anna to cut her figures and make stick puppets of her Nativity characters. Then she put up a play. It went about like this:
Here is baby Jesus. He was born in a manger. His mother was very surprised when he was born, because she wasn’t married yet and didn’t know she is going to have a baby. But an angel told her and Joseph that it’s all OK, and they will have a very special baby. Joseph and Mary got married after Jesus was born, and the three wise men brought Jesus presents. They brought him gold and… two other things. Now Jesus and his parents could buy food and clothes. The end. I am thinking this retelling could make for a good soap opera :)
I am linking this to Tiny Talk Tuesday hosted at Not Before 7 and to StArt hosted by A Mommy’s Adventures.
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13 comments:
I like the baby carrier question - very cute!
We usually stick with the Bible for telling the Nativity events, so we don't get all the story extras thrown in. But, I do like Exclaim Entertainment's The Very First Noel - still our favorite Christmas movie.
Oh my goodness, that is the cutest. I love all her questions and her retelling of the Christmas story. Glad to see she is enjoying coloring now.
I love the way she retold the story! So cute and funny!
I love her questions too.
I love her reteling and that puppet theater is AWESOME!
I love all of this, from her questions to her retelling the story. She did a very good job with her puppet play!
I love it. It IS a confusing story...Crumpet won't color by number at all. Well, not true - he will, but he uses his own colors. Not a rule follower, my child...
I also love Anna's puppet theater, and she did a great job telling the story of Baby Jesus! I never saw the wise men's gifts that way, but I imagine they did go towards food and clothing =)
I love it! I think she got the main points of the story down. I should probably pull out a book to tell the main story to M this year. She sees nativity scenes and says she loves baby Jesus, but I'm not sure she really has any idea who he is!
She really absorbed the story, didn't she? Fun to do a puppet retelling.
The puppets and stage are so great! Love all the colors on the stage. The book sounds great. I will have to look for it.
Oh Natalie, her remark about the baby carrier is priceless and her retelling of the story is definitely one of a kind:-).
Her puppets turned out wonderfully! I like her theater too.
Love her puppet theater. She's getting great gifts for Christmas too:) I'm always impressed by how well she retells stories.
This is amazing...I love the puppet theater and her questions and retelling. What a great project thank you so much for sharing and linking up to stART!
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