How to Create a Pre-school Nativity Play!

Nativity plays with pre-schoolers are extra tricky. They can’t act, they can’t read, they’ll get shy and forget everything the moment you put them in front of people, there’ll be at least one kid who gets over-confident in front of mum and dad and forgets everything, you’ll have some last minute extras to find costumes for and someone will cry and need to be carried off stage! How will anyone hear about Jesus with all that going on?!

Don’t panic!

Here are some tips and tricks to think about for all sizes of groups that contain one or more kids aged 0-4. These are in no particular order so scan them all and make use of whatever is helpful.

  • Don’t do everything
    If you have several different age groups at your church split the nativity into sections and have different groups tell each part of the story. Here’s an example of how you could split the story into 4 groups: The Journey to Bethlehem, Finding a Room, The Shepherds Hear the News, The Wise Men Visit. Or if you don’t have many children in your church choose one section of the Christmas story and do just that one bit. Neither Matthew nor Luke told the whole story in their gospels - you don’t need to either.

  • Sing a song
    If acting is too hard for your littlies give them a shaker or some bells, choose a song that covers either the section of the story or the whole thing, gather them on stage, and away you go - an easy nativity with very little planning or practice required. You could even pop them into costumes for bonus points. Picking a well known song will mean your guests can sing along, picking something more unusual will make it feel like more of a performance - picking something upbeat normally works better!

  • Have a narrator
    1 or 2 adults or teenagers     can narrate the story and direct non-speaking tinies to the right places on stage. If you have time to rehearse, that should make it easier and you might be able to give the group or one or two older kids a line. Angel Nativity Tours was a script I wrote for all ages when we were performing outside with only one mic so the narrators did all the talking - this could easily be adapted for any age group

  • Shepherds and angels
    Lots of kids - no problem! Luke 2:8 says shepherds in the plural, so you can easily have a fairly large group of them. They were also visited by a ‘great company of the heavenly host’ [2:13] so you can have as many kids as will fit on your stage as angels. These are great if you have an unkown number of guests who want to get involved because you can have a couple of staffs, scarves and cuddly sheep to hand out to easily make shepherds, and halos and/or wings make a recognisable Angel. These groups are the perfect place for pre-school kids and older childen to be mixed together. Still need more roles for small kids? Ask your playgroup kids to come in dressed as sheep or give them torches/glowsticks and have some stars in the night sky.

  • Get parents involved
    Whether you need narrators, speaking roles, extra bodies for small groups, people behind the scenes to get costumes on kids and nudge them onto the stage or someone who knows the actions to the songs: ask the parents to get involved. You could even have real life parents of a baby as your Mary and Joseph.

  • Get interactive
    This idea definitely needs more planning, so if you don’t have time for it this year then bookmark this page for next time. An easy way to get interactive, especially if you’re outdoors, is to set up booths or areas each with a scene from the nativity. Get a group of grown-ups, teens or a family to create each scene and then children and families can go and visit each one. There could be a few lines said by characters in each scene, or some questions asking what can be seen or a short reading to help explain what is going on, you could even have a few questions out to interview a character with. This requires very little actual acting from people and has high novelty value for small children and visitors.

  • Don’t expect too much
    There is no perfect nativity and you’re unlikely to get high numbers of converts from the play alone. Go easy on yourself, be reasonable about how much preparation you can do (especially considering that Christmas is already busy), and give space for a talk to apply the story. Most times that kids go wrong in plays it’s adorable rather than a disaster, so set your sights high when it comes to fun and aim to express one aspect of the gospel clearly; any set dressing or proffessionalism you get after that is just a bonus.