3 Great Christmas Play Ideas for Children

There's nothing better than going to a play around the holidays, and it's especially fun if you can watch your children in them. Let's face it; children have wild imaginations and will give you more entertainment then you can find anywhere else.

If your children are interested in putting on a Christmas play this year, you might not know where to start. You have to keep in mind, the plots, costumes, how much speaking is involved, and how many characters you'll need to make the play work. You'll have to simplify any popular Christmas play, so that your children can easily accomplish putting on their own act.

Here are 3 great children's plays and what you'll need to put the play on:

1. The Nutcracker is known to be one of the most popular plays to see or act in during the Christmas season. If this is a play that your children would like to put on, here are some great tips to getting you on your way to the perfect Nutcracker play.

You'll need approximately 5 children to put this play on, and you'll want each of them to have a few different costumes, such as a dress for the main girl character, a suite for the boy, and then some plain leotards for the background dancers. The two main characters will stay in their outfits throughout the entire play, but the other 3 should change from their leotards to clown outfits which can just be baggy pants with polka dots. These couple of costumes can be more than enough to do the shortened version of the play.

This play doesn't consist of any speaking, just dancing. If the children can take good direction and can understand the story line, their imaginations will run wild and probably make somewhat of their own rendition of this story.

The most important props you will need will be a Christmas tree, and a toy nutcracker.

The best way to get this play started on a good foot is to read all of the children the story from a story book, and let them pick which characters they'd like to be. There are hundreds of characters in this main story, so there is a good chance that each child will pick a different character and you can build your play from there.

2. A Christmas Carol is another very popular Christmas play, and it would be very simple to have children put this play on.

You'll need 8 children to act in this play. Someone to play Scrooge, little Timmy, ghost of Christmas past, ghost of Christmas present, ghost of Christmas future, Scrooge's wife and a second Scrooge for the main Scrooge to view in the other time periods.

You need very little props to make this play happen. You could set up a scene in a bedroom where Scrooge is awaken by the ghosts, and a dining room table scene where scrooge will view his past, present and future.

The outfits can consist of olden day cropped pants and button down shirts for Scrooge and Timmy. For the Mother, you could use an old fashioned long dress, and for the ghosts you can make it fun for the children and have them wear a sheet since that is how most children envision ghosts.

Read the children the Christmas Carol Story and let them run with it.

3. Christmas Pageants are always fun for children. Pageants allow them to show off their talents and to get dressed up.

You can have as many children as you want to participate in the Christmas pageant and each child can pick their own Christmas outfit, and talent. You can tell each child that with their talent they need to integrate a skit that has to do with Christmas.

This play allows children to use their own creative minds, and they'll have fun making their own costumes, and developing new talents and creating their own skits. It will be fun for all to watch.