Love came down at Christmas – poetry, the nativity, and children.

Poetry is a great gift for children.

Christmas can be brought to life through the word with an abundance of wonderful poems and verses available.

We love this Christmas poem Love came down at Christmas from Christina Rosetti (the first four verses given here of a longer poem):

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

Poetry offers children vivid pictures to hold inwardly. It builds language skills and imagination, both necessary to help them grasp and digest thoughts, and express themselves as they develop over time. These are such important capacities! And reading poetry is a rich way to spend time together.

Poetry is a perfect offering if it’s late getting bed and there’s no time for a story – a good poem provides a worthy picture for children to take into sleep. 

Here’s another one – the opening lines from The Three Kings by Hendry Wordsworth Longfellow

 

There are many poems which evoke the Nativity tableau so perfectly, and when we bring the two together, a really meaningful experience is created!

The Nativity Tableau at home can be built up bit by bit over Advent – add a piece, remove another, keep it lively and fresh.

Creating beauty and wonder leaves lasting impressions on the inner life of the young child.

We love the Ostheimer hand crafted wooden figures to help tell the story in this poem, The Friendly Beasts, an old carol from France.

 

 

 

At Honeybee we are proud to stock the best quality resources to help you enable such experiences: books, artistic materials, postcards, and beautiful handcrafted wooden essentials for building a Christmas tableau.

Some basic building blocks such as a Ostheimer Nativity Stable, some Ostheimer animals and figures, and a few silk cloths, are excellent value investment items which can be used in myriad ways in addition to Christmas, over and over for festivals, seasonal and birthday celebrations, open ended play, and will last many years!