Congratulations! Most of the hard work in preparing your children’s Christmas pageant is already done! You hold the result of that work in your hands right now—The Mouse's Tale, an Instant Christmas Pageant.

The Mouse's Tale provides a complete Christmas program - now on CD. All the spoken dialogue, sound effects, and music are prerecorded. You even get songs for the whole congregation to sing with the children.

This Instant Christmas Pageant is flexible. Your kids can perform it for

* a Sunday morning service,
* an afternoon or evening children’s program,
* a family night program,
* a special Sunday school program,
* a nursing home program,
* and more!

And it can be performed by children from ages four through eighty-four.

Even teenagers and senior citizens will enjoy putting on this pageant! Or you can have a puppet group perform the pageant.

The Mouse's Tale is easy to prepare for, too. Just follow these simple steps:
1. Read the rest of this book, and listen to the CD.

2. Photocopy the clip art on page 19 to decorate fliers, bulletins, and posters publicizing the pageant.

3. Determine how you’ll adjust the number of roles in the pageant to match the number of children who’ll be in your program. You’ll find a few ideas on how to vary the number of roles on page 7.

4. Have kids help you collect and create costumes and props. Many props can be collected from kids’ homes. And you can create the rest using the photocopiable patterns beginning on page 14.

5. Play the CD for your children, and then assign parts.

6. Practice the play with your children. Here’s the fun part—kids don’t need to memorize their lines! Don’t have them lip-sync the parts, either. Instead, direct kids to follow the action and movement instructions in the script. Or have kids come up with their own actions. After one or two times through, kids will know how to pantomime all the actions!

7. Perform the play. During the play, invite the congregation to join the cast in singing the Christmas carols.

It’s that simple!

Instant Christmas Pageant: The Mouse's Tale
Copyright © 1998 Group Publishing, Inc.