Recreate the Christmas nativity from paper with our latest product – a printable nativity scene.

This is an easy paper craft for all ages from kids to adults. The finished nativity can be used for storytelling the first Christmas and also makes a lovely decoration for your mantlepiece.

Get your copy here

We’ve done lots of Christmas crafts in the past, things like paper decorations, Santa and Reindeer baskets, and DIY Christmas crackers. These are all a lot of fun, but the true meaning of Christmas gets a bit lost in there.

I think it’s important for kids to think about why Christmas exists in the first place. For this reason, I decided to make a printable that focuses on the story of the First Christmas.

To be honest, I’ve “planned on” creating a printable nativity scene for years, but have just never gotten around to it. Finally, here it is!

The printable nativity characters are super easy to put together. They are made by applying glue to the tab and bending the paper into a cylinder. I’ve also purposely designed them to be not-too-fiddly to cut out.

If you like you can colour your own black and white line art version, or use the set that’s already in full colour – both are included in the pdf file.

All the important characters from the Christmas Story are included. There is Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the donkey, shepherds with paper sheep, an angel and the three kings with their camels.

The backdrop is a paper stable with a shining star on top.

How to make the printable nativity scene

The materials needed to create your nativity set are pretty basic.

Card stock is recommended for the stable backdrop for sturdiness, but for the rest of the characters ordinary paper is fine to use. The only other things you will need are a pair of scissors, glue stick and a small scrap of yellow tissue paper to make hay in the manger.

Full, clear step-by-step instructions with photos are included in the digital download file, but this is so easy to make you probably won’t need them.

Simply cut the shapes out, place some glue on the tabs and stick them together.

Because the stable backdrop should be printed on card stock it’s a good idea to score the fold lines before gluing the side panels on. You do this by holding a ruler along the fold line and running a blunt butter knife (or a paper scoring tool if you have one) along the fold. It gives you crisp, clean folds.

Easy peasy!

The printable is supplied in both A4 size and US letter size with appropriate spelling for each version, so that the page set up matches what you have at home.

The printable Nativity scene is just $5.99.

You can also find it in our TPT store

More printable Christmas crafts for kids

• Make some pretty paper angel ornaments to hang on your tree
• Here is a 3D paper reindeer – they look great in rainbow colours!
• Check out our Christmas paper craft collection (and decorate your tree completely with eco-friendly paper ornaments)
• These mini paper lantern ornaments are fun for all ages – add an LED tea light in the middle to make it glow