Nativity Time at Little Crickets

Little Crickets children have loved creating their unique Nativity film and performing their songs to parents.  In planning for our film this year we wanted a ‘real’ element to it, so... we invited Kelly’s Donkeys to bring us Dermot the donkey to help us in filming some scenes. All children have had playful teaching points around the Nativity story that guide and model the narrative. Play is built into our provision, to provide concrete experiences for children to explore their own and other characters in the story, the setting and the context, to enable them to act a role. By exploring emotions behind the characters, children develop ideas and a knowledge of the story and relate these feelings back to themselves. Symbolic representation through our small world toys such as our Nativity set along with making our own characters are important in developing children’s thinking and understanding. We produce a Nativity film as this illustrates what the children are capable of best of all. To create scenes, we direct the adults involved to step back, to not be instructive, allowing the children to develop their own dramatic interpretations and see what happens. We prepare the children for the scene beforehand. As the children step into the very informal ‘set’, in costume, they begin to act,expressing themselves through their prior knowledge and innate desire to recreate roles and pretend.  Watch our film here.