Wooden Clothespin Nativity

Hey there! I want to quickly show y’all this sweet clothespin nativity we made last week. Last Friday our dear little neighbor friends and their mama came for “Cookies, Cocoa, and a Craft”! I’d been seeing different versions of these clothespin Nativity crafts all over the internet and came up with my own version. I really wanted to do them with our co-op kids, but it just wasn’t going to be doable with the number of kids we had and the short time frame to work. If we’d used wood glue, it wouldn’t dry in time to take them home, leaving me only with the option of hot glue which I NEVER use with a crowd of kids. Those things are hot! I remember in one of my elementary art ed classes in college, we had to present a craft idea for a certain grade level and one girl got deducted major points for using hot glue because of the safety hazard. I can’t stand the thought of a child getting burned! However, if it’s 2 mamas doing the hot gluing for their own kids, it’s a different story and that’s what we had last Friday. But there was still plenty for the kiddos to do themselves and they loved this craft!

As you can see, we have Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus made out of wooden clothespins and I gave the kids the choice making them into a hanging ornament or putting them on a stand.

My sweet hero husband didn’t hesitate when I asked him to cut the clothespins into 3 different lengths. He’s pretty wonderful that way. I got the clothespins and wooden stars from Amazon but I’m sure you could also find them at a craft store.

I precut pieces of scrap fabric for the kids to wrap on the clothespins for clothing. I gave them tacky fabric glue for this and so they could do it themselves. It was really cute to see how they each gave them their own little flare with their dressings.

And do you see the happy little smiles added to one set? So adorable. She wanted them to have faces.

Here we have a hanging ornament with the wooden star on the back of the Baby Jesus family and a ribbon tied on to hang it on the Christmas tree. The stars were hot glued by the moms.

And then below we have our Baby Jesus family hot glued onto the wooden star as a stand, perfect for adding to a bookshelf, mantle, or table display.

We also made manger haystacks to go with our cookie snack. We love making these each year–they are so tasty! –but my son does not love the unclothed babies, so he just enjoys eating the haystack and the girls were happy to be in charge of handling the babies.

I love seeing little hands at work, don’t you!

We added our manger haystacks to our cookie platter and enjoyed an afternoon sweet treat!

Along with hot cocoa bombs! And the kiddos went out to play while we mamas sipped coffee and chatted in the warmth of the indoors.

I had planned for my son to read the story of Jesus’s birth from the book of Luke and say a prayer, but I totally forgot! It seems I always forget something when I have company. But I know these kiddos pretty much have it memorized.

This was such a fun afternoon with friends. I treasure these moments of building our children’s faith alongside other families. And I’m soaking up every minute of my 11-year-old still enjoying holiday crafts and activities because he’s growing up so fast and these days don’t last long.

December isn’t lasting long either, y’all! Only 5 more days until Christmas!