The Christmas Story – Creating Excitement
All my children are so excited about Christmas. The sad thing – most of them have no idea what Christmas is about. Even my students who attend church don’t associate Christmas with the birth of Jesus without prompting. Santa takes preeminence even in their minds. So what to do?
I recently posted on my personal blog about Giving the Twelve Days of Nativity. I gave ideas to encourage unchurched friends to think about the real meaning of Christmas. Now as I lesson planned for the first week of December I wondered how to plant the seed of Christmas in my little ones who haven’t heard and encourage those who have. Don’t be intimidated by media hype. You are allowed to teach Bible stories as history and that’s exactly what the birth of Jesus is – history.
We all learn best in small chunks that are hands on. The problem is we often tell the Christmas story in its entirety without much visual and certainly without hands on. I decided to model my lesson plans after my blog post. Here are my plans.
Day 1: Bring out the stable, Mary and Joseph, and a few stable animals. Introduce Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem. Trouble at the Inn (Define Inn). Bedding down in the stable. Demonstrate using dramatic play. Place the pieces in the dramatic play area. Allow the children to retell this bit of the story.