Storytelling with Shapes: Christmas

Storytelling with Shapes: Christmas guides you through a creative, engaging, and tactile way of experiencing the Christmas story. Because of the varying degrees of difficulties in the puzzles, Storytelling with Shapes: Christmas can be used by many age groups, children, youth (6th–12th grade), and even during intergenerational events. 

Storytelling with Shapes: Christmas uses seven individual shapes (tans). When these tans are combined, they create larger shapes (tangrams), helping participants imagine the story. An ancient Chinese story tells the legend of tangrams about a wise sage who, on his journey to bring a square sheet of glass to the king, fell, and the glass broke. When the sage presented the pieces to the king, he restructured them to form images that helped to tell of his journey. The king loved this way of storytelling and recreated the shapes out of wood. And that’s how tangrams were invented!

This resource invites participants to move through the story of Christmas from Luke 1:26–38, 2:1–20, and Matthew 1:18–25 using narrative tangram puzzles. Discover how seven individual shapes (tans) flow and fit together to create larger shapes (tangrams) as you retell the story of the long-anticipated wonderful news of Jesus’s birth.

Shape & Story: The Christmas story includes five tangram shapes, with two options available.

• Match & Place: Match the individual shapes to the shapes on the page and place each shape on its spot to form the large shape connected to the story.
• Visualize & Place: Visualize and experiment with how your shapes fit together to create larger shapes in the silhouette. Then, using all seven shapes, fill in the silhouette to solve the tangram puzzle.

Storytelling Cards: In addition to the five tangram shapes, the Storytelling Cards section includes a leader guide that helps lead participants through the storytelling process, providing instructions on when to create the shapes as the story unfolds.

• Piece it Together: Make the tangram puzzles as you read the story. Arrange your shapes to piece the picture together from each storytelling card.
• Solve the Shadow: Solve the tangram puzzles as you read the story. Arrange your shapes to form the silhouette from each storytelling card.

We hope this new way of telling, hearing, and shaping the Christmas story will allow for a deeper understanding of Christmas and how it fits into our lives today.

How can I use these?

Storytelling with Shapes: Christmas can be used by children, youth, and adults of all ages as a creative way to celebrate the joy and mystery of the Christmas story. Check out this blog post about how one leader used our Storytelling with Shapes: Easter with his congregation.

• Sunday School: take time on Christmas to walk through the story with your tangrams.
• Youth Group: make life-size versions of the tangram shapes and see which groups can assemble each moment from the Christmas story the fastest! Also, these can serve as tangram fidget devices as you lead lessons during the Advent and Christmas seasons.
• Adult Bible Studies & Intergenerational events: invite adults to use the tangram shapes to create the shapes from the stories during Bible studies; have intergenerational groups work together to figure out the silhouette puzzles. You could also see what other shapes they might come up with to represent additional parts of the Christmas story.

What will I receive?

You will receive one PDF that includes both the Story & Shape activity and the Storytelling Cards activity.