Children’s Nativity Set

When we were at the Toy Show in the RDS recently, I was specifically looking for a children’s nativity set. I wanted something with chunky figurines that Little Man could play with. When I was growing up, I used to love setting up the figures in our crib, recreating the nativity story.

Still though, it’s not that easy to find a nativity set that’s suitable for a child to play with. For all that the shops are overflowing with Christmas, they’re not exactly full of the Christmas story!

As soon as I saw the Veritas stall at the Toy Show, I realised that their store should probably have been the first port-of-call in my search. They had two beautiful wooden children’s sets for sale. We picked the Little Star of Bethlehem set.

It’s absolutely perfect, and exactly what we were looking for. The wooden pieces are solid, chunky pieces, nicely painted in bright, glossy colours.

Little Star of Bethlehem Nativity Set

The set includes sixteen pieces in total. The shelter itself just slots together, which makes it ideal for play. When Little Man is playing with it, we can just lift off one side of the roof so that he can have a better view of the interior, and move the animals around.

Lifting the roof for a bird's eye view!

As well as the main characters of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, other figurines include three shepherds and their sheep, the three wise men and their camel, a donkey, a cow, and a horse.

Meet the shepherds...

...and the Three Wise Men and their Camel.

My only disappointment with the set is that the Baby Jesus can’t be removed from the crib. So there’s no putting him in on Christmas morning. But then again, with a two year old, that’s probably safer, and it reduces the chances of us spending Christmas morning in the Emergency Room having Baby Jesus removed from a nostril!

So far, Little Man has played with the Nativity Set in much the same way that he would play with a farm set. He is far more interested in the cow, the camel and the sheep than in the people. But as we get closer to Christmas, I plan to use the set together with his My Very First Nativity Story book to start teaching him the Christmas story.

And I hope that in years to come, unpacking the Nativity set each year, and setting up the pieces will become one of his favourite Christmas memories too.

(I also found this Nativity set for sale on Amazon tonight, so I’ve added it to my new Amazon store in the Toys section, if you want to check it out.)