Nativity Puppet Play

My youngest daughter enjoys telling stories and she loves plays. While she is alone at home with me for two weeks while her older sisters are away, I thought how best to channel her creativity and dramatic flair and we created a Nativity Puppet Show!

We took the hand puppets we created for our Esther play and changed them to rod and wire puppets. This was so that we could quickly swap puppets, hold more than one puppet in each hand, and prop a ‘quiet’ puppet up on stage while working with others. (A rod and wire puppet is constructed exactly like a normal hand puppet but a central cross-shaped rod holds the head and a wire is attached to one “hand”. The rod controls the head and the wire controls one hand.)

We sat with our Bibles and created a short Nativity play. The play is written in rhyming couplets for easier memorization and for fun! It has four simple scenes, a narrator (usually mom or older sibling who can read well) who does most the “speaking”, while the other characters each say a few lines in the play.

We listed all the extra things we needed to make: backdrops and props such as the animals and manger.

My daughter painted the large backdrops ~

We painted these the large paintings on the whiteboard paper. We use the white board behind us for our backdrop. Then she sewed some felt animals by hand and on the machine – all by herself!

She created a few props. She had fun. We spent delightful days creating together. I sewed the wire rod into the hand of each puppet.

We practiced with out puppets in front of a mirror. We learnt how to make the puppet seem real when speaking ~ turning its head and using its hand to show actions and expressions. And we learnt our lines. Then we practiced with the props and changing backdrops.

You can download the free pdf ~ Nativity Play

Included in this download are ~