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.

Use the black-and-white line art version to colour your own nativity, or print 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

You will need:

• White card stock for the stable backdrop (recommended, but paper will still work if you have no card stock)
• Ordinary paper for the people and animals
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Pencils or felt tip pens if you wish to colour your own
• A small scrap of yellow tissue paper to make hay in the manger
• The printable template, available in both our printables store and our TPT store

How to:

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.

More printable Christmas crafts for kids

• Make a set of multicultural paper angels using our printable template
• This Christmas tree doodle art makes pretty wall art to decorate for Christmas
• This set of printable paper baubles are a fun and eco-friendly way to decorate your tree
• Make a 3D Reindeer character portrait using our printable template