Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Clothesline Storytelling

Usually we like to have a Christmas drama each year and we planned one for this year, but a couple of my main characters told me at the beginning of December that their families had decided to go out of town for Christmas. (This is a common thing here and it seems like it is often a last minute decision... we really have no idea who is going to be in town for the holidays.) 

Well, we still really wanted to have something special the Sunday before Christmas, so we had to come up with something with less variables. We needed a drama with no rehearsals required. I had seen an idea about "clothesline storytelling" that I had been wanting to use in my own SS classroom. We decided to try it.
When Sunday came I was so happy to see that everyone that had been traveling had come back early! We had almost all of our regulars there... and they were pretty eager to participate in our Clothesline Nativity!
It helped that one of our men had the same name as the Emperor who issued the decree for the census. He hopped right up to volunteer!  

Here is Mary and Joseph:
We hung one low rope and one high one so that both kids and adults could participate. The costumes were strung on them so that we could just slide them back and forth and not worry about them falling off. I would hand some of them extra props too! 
The shepherds were the funniest, maybe because of their hats, staffs, and sheep. There were a couple of enjoyable giggles throughout, but those volunteering were very serious about their part. The whole thing stayed serious enough for us to really celebrate the miracle of the story we were all telling together!
 I was so happy my parents were there with us! Jimmy's sermon was out of both Luke 2 and Matthew 2, so we got the whole story, wise men and everything. 
 For the part where the wise men travel to see Jesus, we made cardboard camels for them to "ride" on. This gave the little kids a way to participate. Jonah and Silas were one of the camels... we kind of ran out of room, the wise men were supposed to stand in between. 
 Afterwards we packed cookies with invites from our church in preparation for our Christmas Eve outreach.
 We ended up having a wonderful night celebrating God being with us on earth! I think our people did too!

1 comment:

  1. Hey, we can send you some camels! :) I love this idea and it sounds like it was a hit all around.

    ReplyDelete

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