Christmas Activities for Kids – Learning Through Play

With the festive season fast approaching I thought I would share one of my favourite Christmas activities I like to do in the classroom and at home using this cute ‘Decorate the Christmas Tree’ kids Christmas activity I made.

Originally made as play dough mats for the classroom, these cute printables can be used in MANY different ways and can be easily adapted to cater for a huge range of ability levels.

I have used these Christmas activity printables in my classroom with competent counters and I have also used tham at home with my toddler who is just beginning to learn to count with a one to one correspondence.

As there are so many different ways to use these I thought I would share a few of my favourite ideas …

FINE MOTOR

Decorate the Christmas Tree with play dough (fine motor development and creativity).
ABOVE – rolling little play dough balls, then counting how many.
Use tweezers or tongs when placing the object or items onto the mats.

NUMBER RECOGNITION AND COUNTING

Counting and Number Recognition – Use the number cards and have your child/children decorate the Christmas Tree with ____ number of items. Ideas to use are – bows, mini candy canes, mini christmas decorations, stars, pom poms, beads, sequins or balls of play dough.
Use the stars to order numbers from 1-10 (or modify from 1-3 or 1-5 depending on the age or ability of your child/children).
Extend learning by using two number stars and have the children complete a simple addition problem. For example, “first put two bows on the tree, now add three more – how many do we have altogether? (count…) That’s great 2 bows plus 3 bows equals 5 bows!
ABOVE: Here Indi picked a number card, then put that many baubles on the tree.

ORAL LANGUAGE

Oral Languge – simply have your child/children decorate the Christmas Tree and use it as an oral language experience where you focus on sharing your ideas, favourite parts, Christmas wishes, where is your Christmas Tree, what do you at Christmas etc type discussions.
Oral Language – use as a barrier game for listening skills and ask your child to put a blue bead on top of the star, a yellow bead under the tree, a red bead next to the Christmas Tree’s foot etc.

SIZE

Try making different lengths of play dough tinsel, or different sized play dough decorations. Talk about what one is the biggest, smallest, longer, shorter etc.
Ask your child/children to use the gift wrap bows and put the smallest ones on first. Now find the BIGGEST one, put that one top (etc).
ABOVE: Indi placed 5 gift bows on the tree. I then asked her to find me the smallest one, then the BIGGEST ones.

If you like these Christmas activities for kids, they are on my Teachers Pay Store Store for only $1.50 US. You can find the US size HERE or the A4 version for Australia HERE.

Till next time!

Thanks for stopping by love ness X