Edible Nativity Craft

The children and I have done gingerbread house-type crafts before.  Then I found several ideas online for gingerbread nativity scenes.  Perfect.  Just one more way to focus our thoughts on Baby Jesus!  

Our first item of business was to collect all the supplies.  Some we had and some we had to buy.  I found Recipe Shoebox to be most helpful.  It had step-by-step instructions and a list of all the supplies.  

We needed graham crackers, licorice, gum drops (large & small), fruit leather, Milky Way candy bars, Tootsie Rolls, coconut, small candy canes, large marshmallows and small.   We made our own frosting and also used yellow food coloring to color the coconut for the hay.  Oh, and you'll want plenty of toothpicks.  

In the midst of the mess . . .  

We used 5 crackers for the nativity setting. 

Applying the hay to the manger.  It is coconut with yellow food coloring.

Emmet's creation.  The donkey/horse on the right is a Milky Way for the body, four Tootsie Rolls for legs, Tootsie Rolls for the tail, neck and head.  The sheep is a large marshmallow with black licorice for the legs and tail.

Eden with her creation.  The angel on top is two small gumdrops and then small marshmallows for the arms.

Ephraim's scene.  Baby Jesus (3 gumdrops) is wrapped in a Fruit Roll Up and laying in the coconut hay in a graham cracker manger.

Eliza's scene. Mary and Joseph were made from two large gumdrops and then a small one on top for the head.  They're head covering is a Fruit Roll Up and the candy cane is Joseph's staff.

A close-up of Ephraim's.  You can see the horse/donkey (not sure we ever reached on consensus for what it was), sheep, Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus and an angel on top.

Showing off their creations.  They had so much fun with this and it occupied them for over an hour.  They were able to most of the assembling once I showed them what to do and how to do it.  They particularly loved the part that it was edible and wasted no time in asking for a snack.
I'm still trying to decide if it is sacrilegious to eat it but decided that we'd be okay.
We get an "E" for effort in our effort to "Reclaim Christmas" by directing our thoughts toward what is really important this Christmas season . . . Jesus.