Soft Manger For Baby Jesus Yarn Craft

It’s traditional during Advent for children to have an empty manger for Baby Jesus. Each time they do a good deed, they get to place a piece of “straw” in the manger and make a soft bed for Baby Jesus by Christmas day. Here’s a craft you can do for your kids to participate in this fun tradition!

Materials Needed To Make This Craft:

• A popsicle stick (We used the “craft spoons” size, but you can also use jumbo popsicle sticks cut in half or regular popsicle sticks cut in half)
• Assorted yarn (We used blue, brown, and yellow)
• Scissors
• Solo Cup
• Hot Glue

Start with your popsicle stick. We have our craft spoon here. Wrap it in light blue yarn, leaving baby Jesus’ head out.

Attach the end of the yarn to the back with a dot of hot glue. That’s it for baby Jesus. Just draw a little face on with sharpie markers.

Making the manger: start with a disposable solo cup.

Cut the cup down to make it short.

Cut strips down the cut like so, leaving an odd number of flaps:

Start winding the yarn around the cup. It goes in front on one, behind one. In front of one, behind one. Etc etc etc.

Keep on going…

I wrapped mine a lot longer than the girls wrapped theirs lol. They all came out cute.

When it’s been wrapped enough, attach the end of the yarn with a dot of hot glue.

Making the “hay”: Wrap yellow yarn around your hand.

Snip both sides with scissors to create the strings of “hay” for your good deeds.

Put the hay in your manger to see if you need more or not.

That’s it! Add the good deeds all through Advent and then add baby Jesus to the manger on Christmas day!

You can also see how to make the yarn star that goes with it here.

Find More Advent/Christmas Crafts here!