The Advent season is one of my favorite times of the year, as we celebrate the awaited arrival of Jesus. My goal this year is to involve the whole family in our Advent traditions to make the joy of Christmas real and full for our kids. We will be using a Jesse Tree and the Jesus Storybook Bible each day starting November 30th, along with a fun activity each day. I’ve joined with a group of other Kid Blogger Network bloggers to bring you a special Storybook Advent series to help you incorporate books and kid activities in to your holiday celebration, as well as a Christmas Read and Play series all about our favorite holiday books. I’m sharing a quick and fun way to bring the Christmas story to life with your kids using The Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story along with a children’s nativity set and a few extra friends.
Song of the Stars is a beautifully illustrated story book by Sally Lloyd-Jones, the author of the Jesus Storybook Bible. Read more about how we use the Jesus Storybook Bible to bring Christ in to our children’s daily lives here. My kids LOVE Song of the Stars. We read it almost every day during the Christmas season. I put away Christmas books until just before Thanksgiving, and then read them daily until Epiphany when we put them away again. Keeping them just for this time of year helps make them really special.
For this activity, we opened Song of the Stars just after breakfast. Before we started to read I asked the kids to find every animal and doll they could gather and bring them to the nativity scene. We have a Little People Nativity Set and it is perfect for our toddler and preschooler. I highly recommend it for anyone with a baby over 6 months up to elementary age kids. It is just precious and perfect for them to play with.
We read the story and talked about how the whole world was preparing for the birth of the Savior, all of God’s creation. The book does a fabulous job of describing the coming of God’s son in to the world that He made. I get a little misty eyed every time.
We gather all of our little friends around with the baby Jesus in the center and then the kids are free to play with the animals and the nativity to their heart’s desire after we read the book. We talk about how Jesus is the center of the Christmas story just as He is in our lives today.
We talk about the main characters in the Christmas story and who they are. The kids thought it was really fun that all of their little friends came to see the baby Jesus.
Maybe the characters from Cars and Planes weren’t at the original nativity, but they are at our’s and we like it that way.
There you have it, a simple and fun read and play activity perfect for your Advent celebration. Be sure to check out all the other Storybook Advent posts each day at Rainy Day Mum here. How do you celebrate Advent with your family?
Check out the other Christmas Read and Play posts here to find tons of great ideas for story time and play during the holidays.
Lovely. Made me miss my days as the mama of little kids.