13 Christmas Activities for Elementary Students
DISCLAIMER – This is my FAVORITE time of the school year, so these 13 Christmas Activities for Elementary Students are sure to grow as I add to this blog post. There’s seriously nothing better than enjoying the Christmas season with six-year olds, especially when your own children are grown and out of the house! This year I have our first grand baby, so I’m super excited about enjoying this time!
During the Thanksgiving break, I would usually spend one day in my classroom getting ready for the first day back. I would put our Christmas tree up, I also decorated our bulletin board with Christmas items, and I usually added Christmas lights around the classroom. Seems like a bit much, I know, but that’s what I did. (I’ve been out of the classroom for a bit… administration role and Technology facilitator roles), but if I would go back to teaching, I promise… I would be doing this again.
So… I’d like to share some of my favorite Christmas/holiday activities with you! Hopefully they will make your three weeks memorable and fun!
Christmas Bulletin Board Activities
I have three different collaborative poster sets that will surely make your bulletin board an exciting part of your classroom decor. We had a huge bulletin board outside of our classroom for student work display, as well as inside our classroom. I usually did our bulletin board activity the last few days of the Thanksgiving break so that when the students came back to school, it was already up and ready for them.
But there were also years where we put the bulletin board together the first week back. It just sort of depended on the class, on our curriculum, and truthfully on our administration.
So what’s a Collaborative Poster? OH… these are so much fun! Each student gets a piece to the poster. They color it. Honestly – for these, I would tell them the colors that we will be using, so that it has a Christmas vibe.
Once they color, you can either have them cut it out, or you can use your paper cuter and cut it out for them (that’s what I would do).
Next you can have the students sit in a circle and help build the poster. Then you can tape it and hang on the bulletin board.
These collaborative posters also come with a fun writing activity! Super cute and the students love them!
AMAZON PRODUCTS THAT I USE WITH THESE RESOURCES:
(affiliate links)
Seriously if you don’t have a paper cutter at home and in your classroom, you’re wasting valuable time!
Vibrant colors and last forever! Love these!
IT’S ALL IN THE PRESENTATION
Now, of course when my students walk into our classroom, I would surely have a Christmas themed Powerpoint/Google Slide welcoming them to our magical classroom. If you are looking for some fun slides, I have just the set for you. There are a TON of Christmas/winter themed backgrounds, and all you have to do is add your own text! Super cute and very functional.
COLOR BY NUMBER CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES
I know I’ve said it before (sort of like Boom Cards) but ya’ll… color by number activities are great for so many different reasons.
I’ve used these for sub plans, early finishers, center activities, inside recess, and so on! “Most” students love to color, so these sets never disappoint. The best thing IMO is that I have so many different levels, so these are GREAT for differentiation. The pictures are the same, but the strategies are different. So you could have five students working on addition to 12, four students working on addition to 20, three on subtraction, 2 on time, etc. but they are all coloring the same image. By far one of my favorite go-to resources!
Christmas Mystery Pictures Place Value
This whole group activity is sure to be a huge hit in your classroom. We did one like this every year, so I was super excited when I found a way to create them myself.
Here’s how it works:
- Open up the powerpoint and press PLAY
- Students will be shown an amount of tens and ones
- They find it on their color sheet and color it the color it says on the slideshow
- Once complete, the pictures are PRECIOUS!
Students get so excited as they see their image coming together! It’s like MAGIC!
FACT FAMILY PRACTICE
I’m always amazed at the learning curve for fact families – it seems like either they total get it, or they totally don’t. So I created a center activity to help with actually manipulating the numbers for my strugglers to physically move things around. I first start with just the three numbers that need to go into the house. Then eventually I give them all of the numbers to figure it out for themselves, but I did find limiting the numbers first, truly helped my students who weren’t grasping the concept.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DIGITAL
Of course, I’m all about digital! Being a technology facilitator for several years, our goal was to help teachers incorporate technology into the classroom. Our district was trying to go 1:1 before Covid, so I think it’s fair to say we had a good amount of teachers who were ready to add technology, but once Covid hit, everything was brought to a new level.
We were seriously scrambling to help our teachers go from a little bit of technology in the classrooms, to completely digital and working from home. It sure was an interesting time, to say the least.
But with all of that came some really great resources. A lot of my Boom cards were created way before Covid, but let’s just say I had to step up my game BIG TIME to help our teachers and the teachers I serve on TPT and my website.
I used to make digital escapes with Google Forms and QR codes, but once I realized I could use Boom Decks, the clouds parted and angels sang! It was truly magical! I went from lots of prep, to NO PREP! And honestly… a LOT more fun for the students.
My digital escapes all have a story line, with Monty the Mischievous Monkey as the main character! These decks come with the story about how Monty started going to school with Mrs. Montgomery and then goes into the problem that the students need to solve to help Monty.
Check out my Christmas sets below!
Want to read more about how these work, read my BLOG POST HERE!
Letter to Santa
It wouldn’t be Christmas without writing a letter to Santa! And I have to say, many parents thanked me for doing this in class… one less thing they had to think about during this time. But of course, when Covid hit, we had to pivot. So we created a digital template so that the students that were home were able to write a letter as well. This set comes as digital but you can also print out the cute paper for students to actually write on. 🙂
Here’s what we did
I would print out the pages for students to write a letter to Santa. They got to pick the one they wanted – there are many to choose from. This lesson was always a great way to start explaining how we write letters to people.
We would start the letter off with asking Santa a question. It could be how are you doing during this busy season, or how’s Mrs. Clause… but we didn’t just start asking for things.
Then our next few sentences could be about something that is special and dear to us. Next we would ask Santa for one or two things that we really really wanted. Last we would close our letter with something like, “Please be careful when you’re flying all around the world” or “I will go to bed early so you can get your job done.” They always came up with cute ways to end the letter!
Next I would take the letters home, seal them in an envelope, and then bring them back to school and place in the students binders. I would also let the parents know they needed to be on the lookout for this envelope. Worked perfectly!
BEE BOT Activities
If you have Bee Bots in your classroom, these holiday mats are a must have! The topics are simple, so it’s really just a fun way to incorporate robotics into your classroom. Students program their Bee Bot to move to the correct card after they read their task card. Super fun and students absolutely love these!
If you’d like to read more about Bee Bots, CLICK HERE! (AND GRAB A FREEBIE!)
AMAZON PRODUCTS PURCHASED FOR OUR BEE BOT MATS…
(affiliate links)
BOOM CARDS – pre-k or kindergarten kiddos
It wouldn’t be a blog post with some Boom Cards, right? This is more of a kindergarten set and deals with one-to-one counting. Students will listen to how many they need to drag out, then they will drag them onto the picture. These are self-checking and great for those kiddos who still need to physically move items to count. Again… super cute and so much fun!
Christmas Boom Cards for 1st Grade
Here are some different strategies that we just need to cover over and over again, so why not make a cute Christmas activity to change things up a bit. From counting coins, to place value – there’s something here for everyone. OH… and if you aren’t a Boom fan (gasp) I also created these for my Google Slides people. They sort of had to twist my arm a bit, because honestly Boom is better (IMO) but they didn’t want to learn anything else, and I totally understand that – so I have these as Google Slides as well.
Anyone love Jigsaw Puzzles?
Like seriously… I’m obsessed! So much so that I have to actually punish myself from doing them if I have things going on. I just can’t NOT do it if it’s on my table. The other problem, my husband hates them on the table (strong word, but true story!) I loved having puzzles in my classroom, but the truth of the matter was that pieces ALWAYS got lost and I got tired of buying them.
My little brother (downs syndrome) loves puzzles as well, but he only does them on his iPad. When I saw what he was doing, I just had to create something similar for students to do in Google Drive. These don’t snap into place like his app, but they still work really well! If you want to read more and grab a freebie, CLICK HERE!
It wouldn’t be Christmas Without a BINGO Game
This Christmas Themed Sight Words BINGO game is a super fun way for your elementary students to practice level 1 sight words. This is an easy to use literacy center, whole group activity or small group instruction that your students will love. Also works great for Literacy Night if you do this during December.
► WHAT’S INCLUDED:
100 Color cards 3×3 (9 words on each card)
Calling cards
Can print one per page, or multiple per page
Editable Powerpoint file if you want to add your OWN words
Polar Express
Are ya’ll able to show Polar Express? If so… we did this every year once the movie came out – and I can honestly say… MAGICAL!
Here’s how it worked. Students were able to wear pajamas on this day. You will need some parent helpers as well. I had two parents for the hot chocolate (they made it and were there to serve it). Two parents for cookies or some kind of snack – they put it together and were there to serve it.
We decorated our classroom so that it looked “sort of” like a train. We moved the tables into a corner, and set up the chairs in rows. Then we strung lights all around the classroom so that when the students came in the morning of, the classroom was transformed.
Each student was given a golden ticket to enter the classroom. We collected those at the door.
Behind the scenes: At home, I took another set of tickets and put holes into them to write the word believe on each one. I used a needle for this.
FUNNY STORY
One of the years I did this we had a brand new table. My daughter and I sat at the table to do this. I had a piece of cardboard under the tickets as I did them – but it went through the box and I did not realize it. Now you can faintly see the word believe inscribed on our table. Funny not funny! Anyway – if you can get a parent to do this for you, that would be great as well, since this took a bit of prep work. You can see in one of the pics below what this looks like (faintly – I should have taken better pics)
Also behind the scenes: We bought a bell for each student. Then we wrapped each one individually in a box and I gave it to our front office. After our movie was over, Ms. Tina (one of our office angels) would buzz the room and tell me that we had a special package. I would then tell her that we were busy and asked if she could deliver it. She would bring us our box and give each student their present. Some years we did each one individually in a box or an empty toilet paper role, other years they were “wrapped” in a white lunch paper bag. It just depended on time, parent help, and where I was financially (truth). The kids loved it! A few years we even had SANTA himself deliver the gifts.
Then we gave them their tickets back for a souvenir. But we gave them the ones that had BELIEVE “hole punched” in them. They would lose their minds with this part. Always so magical! I wish I had better pictures of it, but the ones below are the only ones I could find.
AMAZON RESOURCES FOR POLAR EXPRESS:
(affiliate links)
Color by Number
If you are looking for a math activity to go with this day, I have some fun color by number pages that could be used with the Polar Express. They aren’t technically Polar Express, but they can still work.
I hope you enjoyed the 13 Christmas Activities for Elementary Students and our Christmas journey discussing the fun ways we made these weeks memorable. I’d love to hear what you do to make these weeks fun, engaging, and memorable for your students!
Until next time!
Shanon Juneau
We Are Better Together
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