Gift= COMPANIONSHIP

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We have cotton wool sheep but what of the other 2 featured animals – here they are. Also if you’ve been browsing through the last couple of crafts and hoping for something that needs nothing more than a printer and a glue-stick this is for you, I’ve even included another sheep! The JWL nativity scene, cone angel, and cotton ball sheep all have a similar scale (if not the same) so they can all go together!

Print out the Templates. Page 1 is the animals, manger and baby, page 2 is a building backdrop. Printout colour PDF – 2 pages Printout no colour PDF – 2 pages Add any colour you may need to then cut out all the shapes. The shapes are a bit delicate so you’ll see there are dotted cutting lines for younger kids! Anything that separates can be mended with a bit of tape or glue later!

To make the manger : Fold the back piece along the edges of the white strip. Using the back piece as a guide repeat with the front piece. Add glue to the white strip and glue the two pieces together making sure the ink / colour faces forwards on both pieces. Glue the back to the front and place the baby inside.

To make the Donkey : Fold along the nose. Fold the belly straps backwards. The belly straps attach by sliding together using the slits provided or glue them one on top of the other. Add glue to the tail and nose then glue both sides together. If you wish you can add a small piece of ribbon as a saddle.

To make the Camel : Exactly the same as above – Fold along the nose. Fold the belly straps backwards. The belly straps attach by sliding together using the slits provided or glue them one on top of the other. Add glue to the tail and nose then glue both sides together. Again, If you wish you can add a small piece of ribbon as a saddle.

To make the sheep : folr along the doted line on the behind of the sheep. add a little glue above the line on the reverse side. glue the back to the front. If you wish you can use a cotton wool sheep here instead.

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Chocolate advent calendars are tasty, lift the flap pictures are fun, but this advent calendar is all focused on one thing, the night the angels come sing to the sheep. Here I use cotton wool balls, but print it smaller and you could use buttons, circles of card, or halves of styrofoam balls. Incorporate a daily prayer, or just use as a counting activity while making the craft with a younger group.

Nothing complex here. Just scissors, the template image, glue and lots of cotton wool balls! Template link Here

Print the sheep as large as you can. Cut out both the sheep and the banner. The banner is not flat, fold along the dotted lines before sticking it to the sheep’s feet. You could also add holes for hanging or magnetic strips for placing on the fridge.

Make sure each child has 24 cotton wool balls (or whatever you are using) for their sheep, and then the hard part, wait for Christmas eve to see your sheep in all their glory!

I did this last year for myself with buttons and loved the result, here is the finished sheep, loving removed from my noticeboard the following November

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Animal games abound and if you have a favourite with your group be sure to use it. Equally many groups have Christmas traditions, which include games they ‘always’ play, if so don’t worry about the season overtaking the message, Christmas is a time of celebration and not everything always needs to link. However, if you don’t have either of the above, here are a few suggestions.

Camel races – Camels can travel a long distance but be prepared for them to collapse in this race. Get your youngsters into teams of tree, 2 people will act as legs and the smallest will be the hump! You could even add a blanket over the hump then have the camels collect and carry gold, frankincense and myrrh packages from around the room!
 

Woollen treasures – use a mixture of cotton wool and packaging material to fill a large deep container with ‘sheep’s wool’. Take a small multi-part toy, a small puzzle, or even building bricks and hide inside the ‘wool’. Tell the youngsters that the sheep were given gifts to hold like the camels but lost them when they had their ‘wool cut’. This can be a single group activity or a race with 2 or more groups

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Donkey teeth – This is a really really silly game a little bit like chubby bunnies but with less of a possibility of choking! you will need to find something small and flat to be donkey teeth, like small biscuits, wafers or similar, cut them down so they aren’t much over 2 cm long- if you find nothing you can even use card. Gather your children and ask them what they know about Donkeys. Try and elicit the 2 answers of ‘big teeth’ and they make a ‘bray’ sound. have all the children say ‘bray’… then slowly give them extra big teeth, after each additional tooth the children need to repeat the ‘bray sound’. (‘b’ is made by pushing your lips together, something impossible with oversized teeth, so expect frustration and giggles) Mirrors are recommended!
 

Whose zoo – This is a game I used to play with my youth group but also work well with kids. Chose a child to be the zoo-keeper and send them out the room, then have each child chose an animal to be and share their animal noise and movement with the group (this ensures there are no duplications). Have the children leave the sitting area and move around the room. Invite the zoo-keeper back in and say the animals have escaped, they will come back (to their seats) if the zoo keeper calls out their names.
 

Sheep separation – This is a noisy and silly game for a group. Choose 2 herdsmen, and assign them each a colour. Using chairs, or some sort of barriers, make sheep pens. Tell all the other children they must pretend to be sheep, on all fours. If someone comes and stands near them they must turn away from the person. when all the children are on all fours mark their backs with a coloured dot. The herdsmen then need to herd the sheep into the right pen.
 

Pass the parcel – Some traditional games suit the story, and I, yes, this one suits so many. Gifts abound in the Christmas stories and you can add animals between the layers and have the kids act them out.
 

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Creatures lessons aren’t complete without creature crafts and these very cute fluff-ball sheep are both simple and quick to make.

You will need some packaging card, scissors, 2-3 cotton wool balls per sheep, colouring pens, a toothpick, a glue stick and the printout (contains 11 sheep per page). You may also choose to use a craft hole-punch and a thick needle. Printout PDF – one page

Stick the printout on the card and cut out one head and 2 sets of legs for each sheep. They don’t have any colour so you’ll need to add some! If you want to use the sheep for a display then double up and stick other set to the back of the card too, or use the shapes as purely as templates and don’t add any decoration.

Thread one cotton ball onto the middle of your toothpick. If you have trouble try using a thick needle to make a hole first.

If you are using a small hole-punch then make a hole at the top middle of each set of legs. You may be able to do this with your toothpick dependant on how sharp/strong it is. Add a little glue to both sides of the legs, this is not necessary but will stop the sheep coming apart. Thread the legs onto the sheep either side of the cotton wool ball.

The remaining cotton wool makes the rest of the body. I’d recommend sniping a ball in half for the head and tail but you can use whole cotton wool balls if you wish.

Lastly add the head by adding glue to the back and pushing into the head.

If you are feeling brave snap your toothpick at the legs so the neck goes upwards. This makes a big difference to the shape but is not necessary.

If you are feeling very adventurous why not use some craft pompoms and try making a camel… or perhaps even a donkey?

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Here are the images you need for the hero’s attributes linked to Christmas Creatures.
Each hero set contains a high quality graphic of the character, a take home bible card and a colouring page.

The images are displayed small here, click on the image you wish to have, then save the image that loads.
(Please note : these images have no watermark but are not copyright free, they are only intended for classroom use.)

English

Extra’s for this lesson

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Today we are going to look at the animals that may have been around when Jesus was born. I wonder if you can help me name them. (get out a picture of the sheep, the donkey and the camel & have the kids make noises – a camel makes a noise like loud belching)

We start with Mary and Joseph. Mary find out she’s going to have a baby because an angel tells her, Joseph is a bit unsure but the angel visits him too, in a dream, and so he takes Mary to be his wife. The Romans decide they want to count everyone and so Joseph had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and take his pregnant wife, Mary, with him.

Wait wait wait… somebody is travelling here and one of our animal friends could be a travelling companion. What kind of animal may Joseph have taken to help him on the journey? A donkey, a noisy donkey! (go ahead and let the kids make noise!)

A donkey would have made the journey easier, perhaps Mary could have rode some of the way. Donkeys can eat along the way so you don’t need to bring food for them, while oxen are slower, and horses expensive. For Mary and Joseph, two young people, a donkey is more likely if there was any animal.

Back to the story. Mary and Joseph arrive at Joseph’s home town, Bethlehem. Sadly, there is no guest room for them so Mary and Joseph have to sleep in the part of the building that usually shelters the animals during the night. When Mary needs to put Jesus down she uses the soft straw in the manger, the pile of soft straw that the animals would usually eat. It sounds like a strange bed to me.

It was not unusual for family members to sleep in with the animals. I wonder what animals usually sheltered in the building? Perhaps donkeys (noise) or cows for milk, perhaps the household kept pets, like dogs. Sleeping with the animals may seem odd today but when people travelled with animals they would often sleep with them… like the shepherds who would travel across the hills around Bethlehem.

Wait wait wait… somebody is travelling here and one of our animal friends could be a travelling companion. What kind of animal may the shepherds be looking after? Sheep, a flock of noisy sheep! (go ahead and let the kids make noise!)

Sheep and goats would travel with the shepherd. They needed to travel to find fresh grass for the animals to eat. Often they would stay camped out in the fields overnight. The bible tells us the shepherds were scared when they saw the angels, imagine how the sheep may have reacted? When the shepherds followed the angles instruction to go find baby Jesus I wonder if they needed to take a frightened sheep with them?

But there are one last group of visitors who came to see Jesus when he was very young, the Magi. The people who gazed at the stars. The bible tells us they came from the East, but we don’t know where. On maps you can see that east of the holy land is dry desert.

Wait wait wait… somebody is travelling here and one of our animal friends could be a travelling companion. What kind of animal may the Magi have used? Camels, some very noisy camels! (go ahead and let the kids make noise!)

The magi may have used lots of different animals in their travels dependant on where they came from, but if they tried to cross the hot dry desert camels would have been the best solution. Just like Mary’s donkey, or the sheep that the shepherds carried into Bethlehem, we don’t know if they were really there. It’s nice to think the animals were companions of their journeys though, even if the bible doesn’t tell us so. What we do know is that Jesus was born, a special baby, God’s son, and he’s our companion, on all our journeys, everyday.

Today’s heroes are the Christmas Animals because they shows us the gift of Companionship
 

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