If you haven’t read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, then you need to right now. You will not regret it. As soon as I found out it was a book and a movie, I had to do this. HAD TO. I listed it as one of my favorites on my Christmas books post last year.
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Best Christmas Pageant Ever Summary
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is the story of a church putting on its annual Christmas pageant, and how everyone is sure it’s going to go all wrong. First, the usual director can’t direct, then the Herdmans, the worst family of kids ever, volunteer to play all of the parts. Everyone is sure the Christmas pageant is going to be ruined. Only it isn’t.
You really must read the book to get the full idea, it’s a wonderful book to read. I really miss the original cover of the book. It had a little girl all dressed up as an angel and she just had the perfect attitude (edited to add, now that I just rewatched the movie again last night I’m pretty sure it’s Gladys as the angel from the movie).
Best Christmas Pageant Ever book club
Wow, Future Ticia 2022 here, and this is back when I didn’t add in discussion questions or anything like that.
This is a simple book. You could read it as a bedtime story over a couple of days if you read one or two chapters a night.
That being said, with my quick search I found a couple of great discussion questions.
- Best Christmas Pageant Ever discussion questions and vocabulary list
- Best Christmas Pageant Ever unit
- Generic Best Christmas Pageant Ever questions– not broken down by chapter
5 more 4th-grade book and a movie
- Holes book club
- Harriet the Spy book club
- James and the Giant Peach book club
- Pippi Longstocking book club
- Charlotte’s Web book club
Watch the Best Christmas Pageant Ever movie with special snacks
I picked up The Best Christmas Pageant Ever DVD last year when I did it was about $17. As I’m writing this, the price has more than doubled, so watch the prices to see if you can get a good copy.
Here’s a breakdown of the snacks we made:
- “Baby Jesus” hot dog snacks, and he’s all wrapped up in his swaddling clothes. They’d look more like him, but I was quite sure all of the ideas I saw for providing eyes would not go over well with my kids. So they’re just yummy.
- Baby Jesus nutter butters were a big hit, and the kids happily devoured them. They’re dipped in candy melt coating and I piped some melted chocolate onto them to make the faces. And given my frosting skills that means Jesus is making some funny faces in some of these.
- Gladys angels. In The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Gladys plays the angel that tells the shepherds about the new baby. To make these and the wise men you’ll need Christmas cookie cutters.
- Wise men gingerbread men. Also known as an excuse to put out gingerbread men.
- little Bibles. At the end of the book all of the kids are given Bibles. I got the idea (and the printable) from the Sweet Story of Christmas.
After everyone had loaded up on snacks, we settled down to watch The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, with lots of laughs on our part.
This is probably the most faithful book to movie adaptation we’ve done in our Book and a Movie so far.
More 4th Grade learning fun
- Bunnicula book club
- Battle of Hastings lesson
- Retrieve a planetary landing shuttle STEM lesson
- Lost City of Pompeii lesson
- Utah unit
For some more great Advent ideas check out my Advent pinterest board.
Follow Ticia Adventures in Mommydom’s board Advent season on Pinterest.
“Christmas Pageant at Art Gallery of Toronto” by Toronto History is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Until the youngest boys were able to read it for themselves, I read this story every Christmas season. It never gets old.
I know, Princess is reading it to us right now. I LOVE this book.
Those little Bibles are a really neat idea. Good to know that this is a faithful adaptation, too.
It was surprisingly faithful. I’m particularly proud of those little Bibles, one of my few times I had something really cool and original.
We read this every year and last year did the play with our church. It’s a classic!! I will admit though… I have NEVER seen the movie!! We need to 🙂
Oh how fun to do the play! Yes, the movie is well worth watching if you can.
These little Bibles are so neat! We also love the book – perhaps will catch the movie on “after Christmas” sale 🙂
I have seen the movie, but I haven’t read the book.
Oh you have to read the book. There’s a couple of fun scenes that aren’t in the movie you’d really enjoy.