Making paper puppets is a wee bit too much fun. Maybe it's because it's when I really get to see my art come alive with my kids! That's also probably why I love illustrating books and fabric so much, because I get to see children handling and playing with the art.
For A Christmas Goodnight, I've made some fun coloring pages and paper puppets to go with the story. I think you'll have fun making up all sorts of uses for these!
A Christmas Goodnight tells the simple story of a little boy saying "Goodnight" to all the characters in the Nativity...
Goodnight to the Baby in the hay
Goodnight to the doves, coo-coo
Goodnight to the sleepy Mother
Goodnight to Joseph too
But you don't realize it's the little boy saying goodnight until the very end, and it's just a charming read.
COLORING PAGES
Download here.
So, what I did, was create 2 pages of characters and objects from the book, so you can create your own interactions and say "goodnight" as well! Some ideas for you:
1) Color in each character as you read the story
2) Make your own ornaments, and hang on the tree as you read the story to your children
2) Back with felt and make a felt board scene.
3) Make your own Christmas Goodnight scene and glue the pictures to the "Starry Night" backdrop I made for the puppet theater.
4) Play a "Find and Seek" game and while you read, have your child go seek the cut out character from around the room, to place on the tree, or in a scene.
DOWNLOAD THE COLORING PAGES HERE
Nativity Puppet Theater
Download here.
The Puppet Theater is simple, but really fun to set up!
In the book, I designed a very starry sky for that magical Christmas night. We usually imagine that night with the ONE new star in the sky. But while that star is the brightest, I imagined that if I were a star, I'd want to shine the brightest for Baby Jesus too! So, it's a starry night...full of stars that all want to shine their best!
This little scene is perfect for acting out and can even be added too with the coloring page characters, if you want to add more!
DOWNLOAD THE PUPPET THEATER HERE.
But right now...I really just want to say thank you!!
Thank you for all your sweet email, comments, notes and support. I've loved hearing how you have wrapped this up under the tree....or that you've already read it to your little children. Creating my very first book around the best story ever told, was such a wonderful challenge! Wonderful because best story ever told, but challenging because it also the most TOLD story ever told. How do you illustrate a story that EVERYONE knows, and loves? It was very daunting and very intimidating for much of the process. But in the end, I just feel honored to have illustrated this story! It's simple and unassuming...yet warm and magical. All how that night must have been.
And to say Thank You,
I thought we could have a little GIVEAWAY!!
All you need to do, is leave a comment below, and I'll choose THREE winners to get a signed copy of the book, as well as the "For Unto You" print, unframed. Or, any print of your choice. But I thought these would go well together!
TO ENTER:
1) Leave one comment below (making sure to leave your email in the comment form)
2) Like this giveaway on Facebook here.
3) Tweet about the giveaway or book using #christmasgoodnight My twitter is here.
4) Comments will be closed Monday night at midnight (EST)
5) USA and International welcome!
6) I'll total up the number of tweets, comments and facebook likes to randomly select the winner.
7) But in the mean time...print off these coloring pages and have some fun this weekend!
Enjoy!
Thanks again! I hope you are all getting into the Christmas Spirit! Love to you all!!
xo
sarah
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