The Christmas Story Sunday School unit

This next week I’m going to be sharing our December Sunday School plans.  We’ve been doing this Christmas Story Sunday School lesson for the last 5 years or so, and every year I intend to write about it, but it always feels weird to write about it after the fact.  So, this year I planned ahead and had my kids try out these lessons before Christmas so I could share it with ya’ll.  Yes I am that weird.

The Christmas Story Sunday School unit is only 4 weeks long so today I’m going to share a bit of the resources I’ve used at home that aren’t practical to use in my Sunday School class and don’t go with a specific lesson.

Christmas Story videos

I’m a sucker for good Christmas videos, I’ve got more videos than I want to admit, but here are the ones we use for teaching about Christmas:

• Why Do We Call it Christmas?– this does a great job getting into the why’s and how’s of our traditions.
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever DVD(this is going to get its’ own post in December)- for a book/movie that’s not Christian in intent it does an amazing job explaining the WHY of Christmas.
• The Nativity Story– I love this movie.  I know there are parts that aren’t biblically accurate, but it gives a great overall feel for the first Christmas.

Christmas Story books

We have 30 picture books, I’ve got an entire post on our Christmas picture books.  I love them.  There’s a few I love more than others

• Mortimer’s Christmas Manger tells the story of a young mouse looking for a home for Christmas. It’s by the same author/illustrator as the Bear books and reading it makes me smile.
• I love the illustrations for Animals’ Christmas Carol, they’re amazing quality, and I’ve got a Animals’ Christmas Carol craft post.
• 
  Donkey’s Dream is based on Catholic traditions and names for Mary, and the illustrations are gorgeous.
• 
  Who is Coming to Our House? is a rhyming book with lots of repetition and pairs well with Animals’ Christmas Carol.

Christmas activities and resources

• Truth in the Tinsel– this is an amazing Bible study if you’ve got younger kids.  They’ll love all of the crafts.  It’s not practical for Sunday School because it’s designed to be used every day.
• Jesse Tree– The kids and I have been doing a variation on this for the past several years and they LOVE it, probably because it’s a fun combination of games and crafts.  This particular one I’ve been printing off for my Sunday School class to take home and complete with their families, I add in my own flair for each day though.
• Small World Play Bethlehem– We need to make new houses for this.  Last year in a cleaning purge I threw them all out.  The figures are still floating around our peg doll collection.

What should you expect this week for the Christmas Story Unit?

• Christmas Storybook (where the printable for all of these lessons is stored)
• Jesus’ Family Tree
• The birth of John announced
• The birth of Jesus announced
• Let’s share the excitement of Jesus’ birth