Hello everyone,

As Christmas is approaching and for those who celebrate it as a Christian, here I leave you some play based ideas I did last year with my four year old.
In case they're helpful to you, I'm very glad so! There's still one week until Christmas, so I think there's plenty of time for all of us to share what we did on the theme! Can't wait to see your posts in the community as well. 🎄⛪️🎅

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Nativity Scene Play Role and Reading

We began by reading about Christmas and what it means for Christian families.
We took our time to play with our wooden toys, to reproduxe the story, to read and overall, just have a good time.
No hurry with this! Let the child lead the play and intervine when needed. Leave him to observe and have his rythm of learning and understanding.

Learning through Play is best!

We have more than one book on the theme. There is this lovely book called The three Magi, the ones mentioned in the Bible who are believed to have brought gifts to baby Jesus: myrrh, gold and frankincense.

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Nativity English Vocabulary

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As always, I try to teach Caleb as many English words as possible.
Same this time with Nativity Scene.
After reading the book version for kids on Birth of Jesus, we worked on this Nativity Words Worksheet.

We tried to pronounce every word both in Romanian and English, memorize it and then indicated if possible with our toys and everything we had on the table.

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Color by Number

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Nothing fancy, just an activity to keep kids busy. But the fact they'll have to color by number, makes it a little bit more chalenging and engaging. It doesnt leave room for creativity but it helps kids follow instructions when needed.

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Pattern Tracing

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Perfect way on the Holidays to work on dexterity and writing skills.
You can always start with a pattern tracing worksheet before writing letters.
Funny though that my son started to write letters from the age of 1.8months and only around three we began to work on pattern tracing.😅

Here is a lovely Nativity pattern tracing.

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Just Coloring

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If there was a color by number worksheet activity, now its just coloring. Now there's enough room for creativity and also to work on fine motor skills.

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Dot to Dot Activity

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Another good option to work on writing skills, fine motor skills and numbers is this Number Dot to Dot Tracing activity.

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Shadow Matching

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This one is an easy one, at least it was for us, for Caleb. I liked it though because we could talk about what we see or dont see 😊.
This kind of activity helps children identify objects without seeing all details and color. Its mostly about identify objects and match it by shape.

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Nativity Caption Writing

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This one was my favorite. After reading and rereading and talking about Jesus and how or where He was born, Caleb had to write and reproduce the story in a few lines.
I loved it because this one is telling me if he was paying attention to the story, our reading and learning time. Also, now it was his turn to express himself, use his own words and create the story himself.

We tried on the first paragraph with writing but he writes....well....like a four year old so it didnt work.
He told me what to write and I wrote down his words.

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Nativity Story Map

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At last, we ended our learning session and play time with this worksheet in which Caleb had to put together the Nativity scenes in chronological order. Basically, it's another reproduction of story, a retelling but in a different way.

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I think this is all we did on this specific theme, based on these resources. I hope you can use our ideas. You can craft some of the materials, if you'd like to or reproduce them as you can with what you have on hand.

Wishing you Happy Holidays!
Have a lovely day everyone! 🎄🎅