Christmas craft for November

For this craft, we are creating a book. The book is entitled (on the cover) My Christmas Book.

You can make this book in two ways. If you can source some little books and then use the book to stick the pages over the plain pages in the book, this will keep the book well kept and it gives you extra pages to let the children be creative and write (the older ones) little messages, like - Andrews book, made in November 2020 when I was 6. Alternatively, the younger children can scribble away and draw in the pages in between.

If you are making your own book - I make the cover and the back of the book with hard card and I print out the words - My Christmas Book which they can colour in.

On the first page I make it personal with their name and the date and a little message like, I made this book so that we can read it together and always remember Baby Jesus’ birth.

For the main content of the book, I use the lovely illustrations from the - The First Christmas, the Ladybird bible stories which is still available on Amazon Books. I photocopy the picture (pages) and each week the children colour them in (I copy the pages in black and white) and then the children stick them into the book or if you are making the book these photocopied pages go towards making the pages of the book.

Keep the craft with you each week and at the end of the Month or teaching period, they can go home with the completed craft. For those that miss a week here or there during the week, I work on filling in their book so that everyone goes home with a completed book.

Here are some photos of the book after the children have been let loose with the sticking and the colouring.

This is the outside cover.

Inside first page.

The children stick in the words of the Christmas Story and the pictures that you have copied from the book each week until they have the whole story. I also use the spare pages to get the children to write (if they can) a message to their parents, this means so very much years later. For those that can’t write yet, I get the helpers to write for them but they dictate the message. I have found children to be so very proud of their books at the end of the term. We use the last week before Christmas (usually the Christmas performance week) to just have a gentle craft where we wrap the present of the book and the children write on a label ready for their own gift for their parents.

The children really enjoy colouring and sticking the pictures in each week. Here is a shot of some of the children working hard on their first page.