The kit comes with a nativity back drop and seven boxes decorated as gifts. Each box contains a figurine for the nativity scene. There as an accompanying poem narrated by Gabriel telling the story of Christ's birth focusing in turn on the role of each figure from the boxes. This is meant to be done over seven days or can be done in one sitting.
The last stanza of the poem each day asks what it is God wants for Christmas and hypes that it will be revealed in box number seven. Box number seven contains a small mirror: God wants each of us to love Him and live for Him!
Each segment of poem is also accompanied by scripture references pointing to the Biblical passages that tell that character's piece of the story and several discussion questions.
Gabriel –Luke 1:26
Mary—Isaiah 7:14, Luke 1:26-38
Joseph—Matthew 1:18-25
Baby Jesus—Luke 2:1-7
A Mirror—John 3:16; Romans 12:1
I borrowed the kit from a friend, but decided to actually implement it using our own Fisher Price Little People nativity set as it's much sturdier for little hands.
The kids were delighted with the pile of seven presents and tickled when they found out they got to take turns opening them over the week.
However, after we'd opened the first figure (Gabriel) and read the poem segment and the scripture, Big Brother looked at me said, "What's our project?"
Oh--oops. I'd been thinking that the gift-opening and reading would be it, but having set the precedence of having some sort of artsy/hands-on project each day the first week, I was locked in by four-year old expectations!
So I scrambled and threw together some things for us to do. As the week wore on, I realized things were not going nearly as well as they had the previous week. Big Brother was right: we did need a project to reinforce the learning for the day, but the projects needed to be tightly tied to a purpose. I also realized that the purpose of the kit and poem we were using--although lovely--did not really flow well with our focus from the previous week.
My take away for next year is that I will still wrap up the nativity figures and present them one at a time, but our theme for the week will be God's Promise Comes True. We'll focus on Jesus as the promised savior who will save us from our problem of sin. We'll ditch the poem and stick to reading either the Biblical text of Bible story book versions. I'll also be sure that each day our activity directly ties to the events we read about that day to help the events stick in the kids' minds.
I do really like the kit and I plan to use it at our Happy Birthday Jesus Christmas party. I'll be interested to see how it goes opening all seven figures in one sitting.
No comments:
Post a Comment