Pop-Up Baby Jesus Printable Activity

This Pop-Up Baby Jesus activity is simple and spectacular.  

Download the free printable, pull out the markers and the glue sticks and create something fun, meaningful, and seriously cool this Christmas.

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with my mom’s family with a three-day event we call Cross Christmas Camp.  

That side of the family is huge and we actually rent a Bible Camp for the weekend each year.  

It’s a blast (and a little crazy).  

This year we upped the ante and all got t-shirts. Here’s my crew in our CCC threads.

Not exactly Christmas Card-worthy, but packed with memories.

At Cross Christmas Camp we eat meals together, play board games, decorate cookies, sing carols, welcome Santa, open gifts, each ton of sweets, laugh and talk, and every single year we craft.

The crafts this year were a variety of coloring projects, but one, created by my Uncle Dan, was just so cool I had to share it with you, and he was kind enough to let me.  

It’s the Pop Up Baby Jesus.  

Yes, it actually pops out!  

This project is a wonderful way to honor the Holy Family and what I love the most is that every time you open it up it feels like Baby Jesus is going to give you a big hug.  

It reminds me of my own chubby babies and how wonderful it feels to have their arms wrapped around me.  

Once the coloring did you can even add a very simple banner proclaiming the good news of Christmas between Baby Jesus’ out-stretched arms.

This project comes together with just two printed pages and a glue stick, but getting it together, and making it pop out is just a tiny bit tricky.  

Here’s what you need to do.

First off, print out both pages of the Pop-Up Baby Jesus project on regular printer paper.  

Set aside the page with Mary and Joseph.  

First, you need to work with the Baby Jesus page.  

Now, this is important.  FOLD BEFORE YOU CUT.

You can find the materials for this project, and MANY other Catholic projects in the Catholic Family Digital Resource Library. To get instant access, and join a thriving community of over 10,000 Catholic Parents, just enter your email address.

You need to make 4 folds in the Baby Jesus Page as shown below:

1. Fold the paper horizontally.
2. Open up the 1st fold and fold the paper vertically.
3. Now it’s going to get a little tricky.  Open up your paper and note the center where the first two-fold cross.  This point is important.  Both folds 3 and 4 need to pass through this point.  For the next fold, you are going to fold the paper diagonally, so that the vertical line lays on top of the horizontal line, making sure that you fold through that center point.
4. Next step is to open up your paper and make another diagonal fold that matches up the vertical and horizontal folds, going in the opposite direction, but also passing through that center point.  In case a video would be helpful, HERE is a similar project.  Skip the cutting at the beginning and go to the point where she is folding the white “t” shaped piece of paper.

After your folds are done, open up your paper and cut along the dotted line.

Now, Baby Jesus has folded in all the right places, but some of the folds need to be pushed in.  Gently push the arms in as shown below and fold down flat.

Hang in there!  We are almost done.  Just the gluing left!

Grab the page with Mary and Joseph.  

Fold it horizontally and tuck the folded-up Baby Jesus inside.  

Work to match up the lines of the manger.  

Using a glue stick, apply glue to one side of the folded Baby Jesus at a time and press it into place. Make sure that you don’t apply any glue to the arms of Baby Jesus.  

It is easiest to keep the arms folded while you do the gluing.

And that’s it!  The Pop Up Baby Jesus is all ready to be colored.

One final step, if you’d like, is to add a banner between Baby Jesus’s arms.  

For this, you need some string and small paper stars.  

Select a word (I used “JOY”).

You will need 2 stars for every letter of your word.  

Write a letter on each star and glue them together, with the string sandwiched between the two stars.  

Space the letters out the evening on the string. Next, poke a small hole in each of Jesus’s hands and thread the string through.  

Lastly, secure the thread to the back of Jesus’s hands.

What a fun, simple, cool project.  I hope you loved this as much as I did.  A big thanks to my talented Uncle Dan!

Once again, you can find the materials for this project, and MANY other Catholic projects in the Catholic Family Digital Resource Library. To get instant access, and join a thriving community of over 10,000 Catholic Parents, just enter your email address.

All the best and a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Nancy