Hi! This is Future Ticia 2025 and I’m updating this post and combining it with another post. This Journey to Bethlehem small world play starts with a series of fun crafts and then becomes a fun place your kids can play with for a long time. This bible lesson disguised as a craft project is part of our Christmas Story Unit and I would put this as either part of the Birth of Jesus foretold lesson or the Jesus is born! because both take part in Bethlehem.
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Supplies needed for this Small World Bethlehem play
Supplies to make stable: small box, paper bag or brown paper from the Amazon packing materials
materials for manger: felt (you can make several from 1 piece of craft felt), needle, thread, yarn, scissors
Materials for Bethlehem: empty milk cartons, small cardboard boxes, brown acrylic paint, sand, black construction paper
Side point, if you don’t have all the boxes and all that. Then pick up my Bible village. You can print it on cardstock and put together the buildings then paint them to do the same idea.
This year we went to a “local” (I think only Texans would say driving for over an hour to another town is local) live Nativity. The church has created a beautiful recreation of Bethlehem you can walk through, and I want to do a post on that, but let’s face it, who wants to see endless picture of someone else’s field trip? Okay, I often do, but mine don’t tend to be popular posts.
Making our Bethlehem town
First, gather all of your materials together (Thank you, Jeff, for taking pictures). Pour a small amount of the paint into a cup, then pour some of the sand in. Mix it together.
Now start painting your boxes.
It works best to spread the paint somewhat thickly, so it covers up the text and pictures on your cartons.
When you are done painting, cut small squares of black construction paper to make doors and windows.
My kids wanted to be able to go into the houses, so we cut doors into most of them, and that made the kids quite happy.
The sand adds a nice bit of texture to the city, and the kids really liked it.
As I was looking at my Pinterest boards, I just realized that a lot of my ideas came from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots, I pinned the idea to come back to and remembered seeing it, but hadn’t read the post yet, but apparently she did almost the exact same thing. So go love on her post because, isn’t it a great idea?
Now, let’s make a stable, because Jesus needs somewhere to be sleeping.
How to make a stable
First, we need to make the stable. So, back when I first wrote the original post, I was also writing for another website, and there was a detailed explanation of how to create the stable as part of a “how to make a bear cave tutorial.” That post has since been deleted, and I apparently didn’t keep my rough draft of that.
So, here’s a quick description of what to do. Take a brown paper bag, or the brown paper that comes in Amazon packages and crumple it up so it has lots of wrinkles in it. Then tape it to a small box so it creates a rock-like texture. You could also paint the paper to create different colors, but that is way too complicated. Now back to 2012 Ticia
After that, my project more or less followed the directions. The kids……. in particular the boys…… Not so much. You’ll see the full impact of it at the end………
materials for manger: felt (you can make several from 1 piece of craft felt), needle, thread, yarn, scissors
First, cut a small square from your felt, about 1 inch by 1 inch.
Next, fold the felt in half, so the sides meet. This lets you make a mostly symmetrical and lined-up piece.
Cut the length of your manger. Ours was about 2 inches long. I cut some extra length to have some wiggle room for the next step, about 1 inch.
Fold the felt in half like you did in the second step. This lets you make sure the final side you’re cutting out is the same shape as before.
This is what your piece will look like when all done. Princess commented that it looked kind of like a cross…… I hadn’t noticed that until she said it, and then I couldn’t get it out of my mind. From here on out, your kids can take over the craft.
Hold 2 adjacent sides together and sew up the sides. Then hand your Mom the felt to tie knots. I sat there tying knots for 10 minutes. As soon as I was done with one kid, the next would be ready for theirs, and then it would cycle back to the beginning as each one finished their sides.
But they loved it. It was wildly popular with them. Finally, add some yarn for hay. We didn’t have yellow yarn, but we did have some yellow rope, so we took that apart and used it. Worked like a charm.
Now put your Holy Family in the stable with some extra hay, and you’re ready to play with your Nativity set.
Then they each took turns playing and setting it up for me to take pictures for the next hour or two.
I kid you not. Princess took about 20 minutes or so, and that was with me helping her.
Batman took over 30 minutes. He had to set up traps and the men to protect everyone in town.
Superman went through the town and made sure every house had soldiers standing guard over them for when Herod came. Jesus had his own platoon. It was quite impressive.
Over all the kids have loved this project, and every day for the past week, the only question I’ve gotten is “When are we going to make more of our Nativity set?”
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