Even though we are not religious, I believe in teaching my daughter that Christmas is not about Santa Claus bringing presents and Easter is not about Easter Bunny. We kicked off the Christmas season right after Thanksgiving by pulling a book from our own library – A Baby Born in Bethlehem by Martha Whitmore Hickman. Outside of Joseph being pictured as quite a young man, the book narrates Nativity story pretty well. We also got out our Playmobil characters to replay the story:
Mary, Joseph and donkey are leaving their house in Nazareth. By the way, my husband made this house and also made the reconfigurable fence around it.
No room in the inn! OK, the inn looks more like a Roman fort (also made by my husband)
A kind innkeeper has offered them a nice warm stable…
Adoration of shepherds and beasts (including a dinosaur!).
I didn’t get Wise Kings in action, they had a hard time getting back into their Playmobil robes and finding their gifts. That’s a problem of Playmobil sets – so much of small plastic stuff floating around even if it’s high quality plastic stuff.
How do you get into holiday spirit?
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12 comments:
I think it's wonderful that you are open to teaching your daughter the real meaning of the holidays. I love the way you chose to do it too. It's not always easy for families who are "religious" to teach and keep the holidays focused on their real meanings.
Little Wonders' Days
I'm sure we'll be acting it out too soon enough. You've seen some of my plans. Hopefully later today I'll finish up my project....... I sure hope so because otherwise I will have some unfinished Christmas presents......
What a crafty husband you have! We watched the Netflix documentary about the Lost Boys of Ruwanda, after Joyful Learner reminded us about it - and we were disturbed by the "boys" reaction to our cultures take on Christmas. To them the trees, shopping, and Santa Claus didn't make sense - Christmas for them was about preparing ones heart to celebrate the coming of Christ. We've been speding some time researching the origins of many of our customs. We started Thanksgiving evening with Phil Vischer's "Why Do We Call it Christmas", and have moved out to books from there. Naturally we have our nativity and Bibles out too - that part of Christmas is never far from our hearts. This is turning into a post instead of a comment though - but I have to ask - if you're not religious - I take it that means you don't believe in Jesus - then why focus on His story at Easter and Christmas? Or, if you believe His story to be true, and the "reason for the season" - then why not embrace the rest of the Bible as well? (this question is pure curiousity, and not intended to be cheeky in any way :)
I told you I wasn't a natural speller :) Please read "Ruwanda" above as "Rwanda" - and just ignore anything else I mangled.
That's a nice way to teach the story so she'll remember it.
I am always so impressed by the things your husband makes!
We have a wooden nativity set from Israel that we let the kids play with. I need to teach them more Christmas carols, though, and we may try doing some sort of story enactment the way you did this year. Growing up, my family dressed up and acted it out - but that works best if you have a lot of kids!
Dinosaurs can get in on the fun, too. :) I love the idea of reenacting some of these scenes with Legos and such--we might have to try that! :)
This is such a great way to teach about Christ's birth. I agree Dinosaurs deserve to be there too.
Playmobil pieces drive me crazy!
Okay - you can send me the blogger idiot award for the year - then make the Ruwanda, that should have been Rwanda, the Sudan instead :)
Your husbands creations are very impressive.
I like your idea of acting out the Nativity. I made some felt figures for our cherubs to use when we tell the story. We also have a nativity set (that you may remember from last year) that our children play with.
I love how acted out the Nativity story. We'll have to add that to our Christmas schedule.
jeannine: waddlee-ah-chaa
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