A Simple (Frugal) Nativity

I've been wanting to make a nativity with my kids, but it's hard to find materials that are simple enough for their young fingers to handle.  When a friend told me about this flowerpot variety, I knew it was perfect!

You'll need:
3 small flowerpots
a few fabric scraps, in a variety of colors
glue (we used Elmer's)
3small balls
masking tape (optional)

Gather your materials.  I shopped waaayyyyyyy ahead for this buy purchasing the flower pots at the Dollar Tree back in the spring.  My three are very small but came as a set, so the price was great!  We paid $1 for this whole project.

Having shopped so long ago, I couldn't remember if I had purchased small styrofoam balls or not, so My Little Man and I rolled some spare yarn into balls.  For the third, we covered a Ping Pong ball with the same yarn.

Flip two pots upside down.  Glue or tape one ball each to the top (was the bottom) of the pot.  This forms the heads of Mary and Joseph.

Next, wrap the third ball in a scrap of fabric.  Tuck it into the third (upright) flower pot.  Our ball seemed a bit too low to be baby Jesus, so we put a cardboard scrap underneath the ball to prop it up a bit.

Choose two fabric scraps to wrap around Mary and Joseph.  Our scraps were a bit raggedy, so My Little Man asked to trip up the edges a bit.

Using your glue, attach the fabric to the pot.  With two more scraps and more glue, create head coverings for Mary and Joseph.  (The wet spots you see in our pictures did dry and can't bee seen - it was just glue from this step.)

My Little Man chose to stop at this point.  He liked the look of his Nativity without a face, but if you choose to continue, use whatever materials you'd like - googly eyes, yarn for hair, beads, buttons, etc.

While this Nativity isn't suitable for preschool playtime as the clay pots are breakable, it's definitely something that I'll be dating and displaying every year - and if you did want to let your kids play it, you could always do this same thing with simple plastic cups.

Have you ever made a Nativity with your kids?  What kind of materials did you use?