5 engaging ways to teach the christmas bible story for kids
I’m so excited to start learning about the Christmas story with my preschoolers at church! I only had 2 Sundays to do Christmas this year because of Christmas falling on a Sunday and vacation, but we still had fun squeezing in what we could with the Christmas Bible story for kids! Let’s take a quick look at 5 engaging ways to teach the Christmas story.
christmas exploration stations
My preschoolers LOVE our exploration stations for each of our Bible units. And I love that their play is purposeful and connects to what we are learning. I blogged in detail about exploration stations earlier, but here’s a look at a few of our favs from our Christmas unit…
Christmas Story Ornament Match – Kids pull out a nativity ornament and add it to the Christmas tree as they retell the Christmas Bible story.
Nativity Pretend Play – This is just some free play time as preschoolers reenact the Christmas story.
Building a stable for baby Jesus – Kids use blocks to build a stabe and then put a baby Jesus inside!
christmas bible story For Kids
During our bible story time, we use the Bible story visuals from my Christmas Bible unit to tell our story. For my preschoolers, I assemble the pages into a book to read each Christmas story. For older kids, you can cut them apart and have them sequence the pages
We had a key word to listen to {angels for this lesson} and they made a halo on their head every time they heard “angel” during the story. I love adding in motions during story time to help our early listening skills! 😉
retelling the christmas bible story for kids
For this unit, we used the Who Am I? game from my unit to practice our retelling the Christmas Bible story for kids. I put a character from our lesson in a Christmas gift bag and read the clues from the correlating cards to my preschoolers. They had so much fun guessing who the Christmas character was and “opening presents” to find out if they were right! {This would be perfect for older kids like first graders to do with partners once they can read!}
Coloring
After our Bible time, we play games and finish our coloring {coloring is one of our exploration stations at the beginning of Sunday School}. Coloring may seem old school or boring, but I love setting aside some time for coloring in preschool because it’s so important for practicing those fine motor skills and holding a pencil that are so important in handwriting!
Since my class this year is almost all boys (!), I’ve started playing a short kids song during our coloring time to give them a goal for focusing on coloring. I start the song and they try to see if they can sit and color during the entire 2-3 minute song. This has worked WONDERS for my boys! They love listening to the music and singing along and I love watching their fine motor skills grow!
This week, we listened to Hark! The Harold Angels Sing! since our lesson was about the angels. They had a blast listening for our focus word and making their halos while we were coloring too!
The other activity I like to do during coloring is talking about the different parts of the picture. It can be as simple as, “Oooh, I see the manger in my picture. I’m going to color it brown. The manger was where the farmer put the food for the animals, and it’s where Mary had to lay baby Jesus because there were no beds! What color are you coloring your manger?” This is a fun combination game of I Spy and reviewing the Christmas Bible story.
christmas handprint manger craft
And I can’t wait to make these adorable ornaments this coming week as we learn about the birth of Jesus!
Check out all of these activities and much, much more in this 70 plus page Bible Unit!
