A DIY Kid Friendly Nativity!

A few years back, Nick and I decided to make Addison her very own nativity set to play with so that she wouldn't be as tempted to play with my pretty, fragile set! I never had a chance to share it with you here on my blog so I am going to do that today!

I had seen some ideas around the blogging world but nothing really stood out to me, so Nick and I put our heads together and came up with our own version. Obviously we didn't want to complicate things too much so we decided to create a block nativity set!

To create the nativity, we found a bunch of adorable clip art pictures online. I printed each picture in the size that I wanted and then wrote down the dimensions for Nick so that he could cut a block for each. After he cut them, he sanded down the rough edges (and rounded the corners but that is not necessary), and then spray painted them white.

I then cut around each picture so that they would fit onto the front of the blocks and I used a thin layer of Mod Podge to attach them. After they dried, I then added two more coats of Mod Podge to the top of the blocks so that they could withstand lots of play time!

In order to keep the blocks from getting lost or separated, I also sewed a cute little drawstring bag using burlap, muslin, and cotton fabric pieces. You can find the pattern for the bag, here. I changed the dimensions on the bag so that it would be large enough for all of the pieces. I also wanted to make sure it was obvious what the bag was so I printed the nativity picture on a piece of iron transfer paper, and ironed it onto a small scrap of muslin fabric and then sewed it to the front of the bag.

Addison absolutely LOVES playing with her nativity. She loves when we break it out every year and she literally will play with it every day until it's time to put it back. The great thing about it being in block form is that not only can she set it up like an actual nativity but she can also stack them up to create a tower, or line them up to form a "choo choo train". The possibilities are endless!

I can't find the exact website where I found our printables but here is a source that has most of the same clip art pictures. The only difference is that the animals (except the camel) are different. I found them from this source. I really love the idea from Happy Home Fairy of introducing each part of the nativity every day. It's a great way to tell the story of Christ's birth to your children! I think I may try to create my own version of it and introduce it to her that way next year.

With Christmas as commercialized so focused on materialistic things as it is, we've really tried to make sure to teach Addison what Christmas is really all about this year. She's definitely at the age where she can understand it and we don't want to give her the impression that it's about presents and Christmas trees and pretty lights.