Christmas Activities for Kids: Classroom and Home Ideas

Word games built on the season's vocabulary

Christmas words are long and irregular — reindeer, stocking, ornament, gingerbread — which makes them useful spelling practice that never feels like a drill. Four games use the same words in different ways:

• Word bingo plays with the whole group at once. Paste a list of Christmas words and every card draws a different set. The list needs at least as many words as a card has squares, 24 on a 5x5 card with a free center or 16 on a 4x4; with fewer, the cards use the built-in theme list instead.
• A word search suits early readers, who only have to recognize each word rather than spell it. Two children sharing one grid can race to find the last word.
• A word scramble, with a short hint printed under each jumbled word, suits children who can already spell most of the list.
• A crossword is for confident readers, who reason each answer out from its clue. Writing the clues together is an activity of its own.

Run one list through two games in the same week, the search early on and the scramble later, and children meet every word twice in two different jobs.

Calm picture activities for the week before winter break

The week before a long break is loud, and a picture that slowly appears under a crayon is one of the few things that settles a room. Three kinds work well:

• Color by number has a Christmas tree and a gingerbread person built in. Plain numbers suit children who cannot read yet; the addition and multiplication versions hide the same picture behind math facts.
• Dot-to-dot pictures include a tree that turns into a Christmas tree with round ornaments once the dots are joined, and a star to put on top of it. Count by ones for young children, or by fives and tens for older ones.
• A star-shaped maze runs from the easiest level, with wide paths, to the hardest, and prints its solution on a separate page.

Keep one of these ready for every child who finishes something else early, and the quiet half of the afternoon looks after itself.

Christmas math activities

Math folds into December without losing the season. Color by multiplication is the clearest example: the gingerbread person on the easy setting uses facts with answers from 4 to 10, while the Christmas tree on the hard setting uses products from 24 to 72, so one picture stretches from third grade to sixth.

Bingo has a math mode too. The cards show answers, the caller reads out a fact such as 8 x 3, and anyone with 24 covers it. For counting practice, put a December page from the printable calendar on the wall and ask how many days are left until Christmas, how many of those are school days, and how many weekends are in between.

Writing activities children want to finish

A letter to Santa is the one piece of writing many children are eager to make neat, because they want it to be read. Start younger writers on story paper from the lined paper generator: they draw what they are hoping for in the box at the top and write a sentence on the guide rows below it. Children still forming their letters can trace the opening lines on a handwriting practice sheet first.

After the holiday, the same paper suits thank-you notes, which give children a real reader and a reason to write in full sentences. Older children can practice the words that go inside a card, such as Merry Christmas, joy and peace, in cursive. For a child who does not celebrate Christmas, a letter to a grandparent or a story about a favorite winter day is an equal choice, not a lesser one.

Paper crafts you can cut from a printable

Not every craft needs a kit. The advanced sheet in cutting practice includes a star and a heart among its six shapes. Cut them out, color them, punch a hole near the top and thread a ribbon through, and they hang on a tree as paper ornaments. A child who cuts carefully along the line ends up with a shape that looks finished, which is the whole point of the practice.

A colored page can become something too. A finished color-by-number tree, folded in half, makes the front of a card, and a mandala from the coloring pages can be trimmed into a circle and hung as a decoration. Print on cardstock if you have it, so the shapes hold up on a branch.

Christmas activities by grade

Treat the table as a starting point rather than a rule. A confident kindergartner may enjoy the first-grade row, and any child can do any picture.

Younger children need an activity explained once and then left alone with it. Older ones enjoy building part of it themselves, like writing the crossword clues or choosing the bingo words.

Christmas activities at home over the break

At home, the simplest structure is a countdown. Print a December calendar, stick it on the fridge, and let your child cross off each day with a marker. Pair every day with one short activity, such as a word search, a color by number, a maze or a card to decorate, so the countdown becomes something to do as well as something to watch.

One sheet a day is plenty. Once the presents are open and the days stretch out, switch to the holiday-neutral winter set, with its snowmen, mittens and January calendar, so the activities carry on after Christmas itself is over.

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