Arts and Craft Education - 1955 - Make a Nativity Scene

Here's a project that comes to us from a small 1955 magazine "Arts & Craft Education" With this how-to article by Geoffrey Tucker. If you click on the images twice you can print these out and create a memory.

MAKING A CHRISTMAS CRIB
This Christmas group is in the simplest form of the series " Postcard Handwork ". Even the very young will find little difficulty in making the figures stand up, the older child will find more interest in making the Baby's crib and the manger. The directions for this are on page 6.

The photograph here shows the setting made from the actual drawings on the following page, cut out and pasted on to thin card. It will be more interesting for the children to trace off these figures on to postcards so that they can enjoy the added task of colouring them, remembering that the Three Kings would certainly wear the richest possible colours while Joseph, a poor man, will be in faded dra ~colours as contrast. Mary would most certainly be in a blue mantle, the rest the childrei can imagine to their hearts' delight. If a reproduction of a painting of the scene by an Old Master can be found so much the better.

If the grouping is to be in a stage effect made from a box many more angels could be made with some (still slightly curved) suspended by cotton from the top to float, these will not need the stands attached. More shepherds could be added by tracing off the main shapes of the Kings and dressing them differently and instead of their costly gifts, carrying a staff or young lamb as offering. In fact, the older children will enjoy inventing their own characters and grouping after using the following drawings as a basic idea.