This year I got out a "new" nativity that the boys are enjoying.
It's a traditional German Christmas Pyramid. I am glad that my parents thought to get one just for me, when we lived overseas.
On the top are the angels with trumpets to announce the christ child. The middle tier has the shepherds and their flock. The bottom has the 3 wisemen and the poor donkey, with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in the center.
It's supposed to work with candles all around the base. The heat from the candles would rise and make the carousel turn. When I was young, we lived in Germany, and my family used several different kinds of candles for celebrating the advent, but when we had a candle wreath catch fire, we decided that we no longer needed to use the candles, just to be safe :)
I got this Fisher Price Nativity when Thomas was 2. I like that they can touch it and interact with it. Last year I had lots of issues with baby Jesus being treated poorly and thrown around the room, but this year, they are doing really well with it.
We watched the Animated Nativity (from Living scriptures) for our Family Home Evening last week. As each new character was being introduced, they boys automatically associated them with the toy nativity characters. Their favorite this year is the donkey. The toy donkey has a cart with food. So when Joespeh put some saddle bag type thing over the donkey's back and started to lead the way to Bethlehem in the movie, Grayson was concerend "where is his cart and his food, Mama?" Thomas hopped out of his chair and pushed the angel on the top of the stable when the angel appeared to the shepherds in the show. And I haven't been able to get the 3 Wisemen set of the toys (they cost another $25) - so when the wisemen came, the boys were not as connected to this part of the story. But we did make a big deal out of the gifts that they brought, and explained that it's great when we give gifts to others as well, and they liked that.
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