Live Outdoor Nativity Scene Play

This will work if you have an outdoors nativity scene.  We pretended we were
 part of my outdoor nativity scene.  In other words we had a living nativity scene,
 we just didn't have the live animals, except for my families dogs, which all
 the kids thought it was neat that the dogs were part of our pretend play. 

Nativity Scene Puppet Show

Cut out pictures of the Holy Family from old Christmas cards. Let each child
 choose one that they like and glue it on to a popsicle stick . Have a puppet show.

Nativity Scene

Hang a glittering star over a quiet corner in your room.
 (The home living area is where we put ours) Under the star,
 place a rocking chair and a doll sized manger. Inside the manger,
 place a doll, wrapped in "swaddling clothes." The children do a wonderful
 job of taking care of "Baby Jesus." Sweet photo opportunity too!

Away In A Manger

We used props (hay, manger, baby, stars, etc) to act
 out the song "Away In A Manger" while we all sang it.

Christmas Play

Bible Costumes.
Use white bed sheets that could be  donated by members of the
 congregation/parents and  make wings out of wire hangers (White tights
 worked great)  outline/decorate them with fabric paint in silver and fo
 the Angel Gabriel  use gold. For the Halos use Christmas garlands (the
 wire ones with little stars on them, you get those in silver or gold as well)

Props
Use big paper rolls  for your three Inns and the Stable, paint the Inns
 and Stable with tempera paint on it and then attache them to room
 dividers (some move individually they are free standing, but big
 cardboard boxes would have worked just as well).

Make huge Palm trees out of cardboard, put the stems in paint buckets,
 paint the stems brown and buy big green Construction Papers, to cut out
 the leaves, to give them a shape  duct tape wire to the back of the leaves,
 then you will be able to bend them every which way. Position the Palm
 trees left and right behind the stable and make a Star out of
 Cardboard  (wrapped in Tinfoil) and attach Christmas lights to it.

Around on the stable floor and the cradle arrange red Christmas lights.

When you are in front of the stage, all you should see are the 3 Inns, the stable
 is hidden behind the 3rd Inn, Inn 1 and 2 are to the left and to the right of the
 3rd Inn, so you could not see the stable. Have older Children (called your
 Stagehands, because they want to help) they can remove the 3rd Inn
 after the scene there is done.

Use a lot of cardboard, tin and gold foil for the Wise men's gifts.
 You may need to have people to help sew the costumes.

The "animals" can be wearing jogging suits in the color of the animal
 they presented or you can make those costumes out of paper bags
 and the headpieces out of construction paper.

With a lot of imagination and a group of people, you will be amazed what
 you can come up with. It is a lot of fun to see it come together and then
 at the special day, see the amazed parents looking at their "Star".