Keeping the Christ in Christmas

 “Pippin the Christmas Pig”

 Ø      This is a story book. It is about a small pig who lives in the stable where Jesus was born. Pippin, the pig, is quite distraught throughout the story as she feels that she didn’t have an important job in the birth of Christ.

Ø      We adopted this story as our theme for the Christmas season.

Ø      We created a Christmas mural of the stable where Jesus was born. The children worked in groups to create an animal. They used paint, paper, pastels, and cloth. Once they were finished they created a speech bubble to show the name of the animal and his or her job in the Christmas Story. Once the stable was created, as a class, we decided where each of the animals should go and why.

Ø      After creating the mural we began acting out the Christmas Story. We learned about it from various Christmas story books and we always referred back to the “Pippin the Christmas Pig”.

Ø      The children then created small pictures of themselves and speech bubbles to go with them. In the speech bubbles we wrote: My name is _______________. I want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. It is my job to _______________________.

Ø      We then displayed our self portraits around the stable scene we created.