It’s that magical time of year. You can feel the entire holidays stretching out in front of you. Your assessment is finished. There’s that buzz in the air that only comes with end-of-year carols and class parties.
Here are 9 easy, meaningful, no-prep activities for the last week before Christmas holidays.
(Credit: Gingerbread clipart numbers by Artifex).
Investigate Christmas symbols. As a whole class, make a list or mindmap of things that are associated with Christmas. Pine trees, candy canes, wreaths, stockings, reindeer… the list goes on.
After discussing some Christmas symbols, make your own Christmas cards from scratch. Put out all of your leftover craft materials – coloured cardboard, scraps of Christmas wrapping paper, random bits and pieces from the year (foam shapes, ribbon, buttons, etc). Give them several types of adhesive (PVA, tape, glue stick). It’s an excellent way to use up any remaining material floating around.
Don't give templates or blackline cards to color in, but show students examples of how to make the symbols out of craft material. Of course, this requires a lot of teacher demonstration and explanation. Here are some photos of simple cards to make:
Talk about who to give cards to – family, teachers, or others in the class (always a popular option). Talk about the messages that are written inside the card. Warning: allow ample time to clean up afterwards.
Christmas Spelling: This is a free interactive PowerPoint – finding the missing letters, identifying the correct word, and answering multiple choice questions.
Find the FREE spelling PowerPoint by clicking HERE.
You can’t go wrong with interesting, themed writing tasks. The success of these depend on how much you excite the children with ideas as you introduce and model the writing.
‘Do NOT Open This Present!’: Children revel in inventing utterly disgusting and useless gift ideas, such as a bag of monster toenails, a rotten Christmas ham, or shrinking powder!
Problem Solving. Here is a free problem-solving activity based on Tony Ryan’s Thinkers Keys. Here is an example: List A-Z all things relating to Christmas.
Find this FREE resource HERE.
No worksheets are needed for this. Have your students use up the last pages in an exercise book or scrapbook.
As a whole class, use the internet to research reindeers or the North Pole.
Show how to input a question or use key words. Demonstrate how to choose a link that looks relevant and with the class’s help, navigate the website to read the information.
Do a simple 3-2-1 about what they read (3 facts they learnt, 2 facts they found interesting, and 1 question they still have). Accompany with a reindeer directed drawing video from Art For Kids Hub, available HERE.
Give the students short text passages to infer what was in the present. There are also match-up cards to use in pairs or independently.
Find this resource by clicking HERE.
Have the class make their own wrapping paper to take home. Give each child a large sheet and they can decorate with drawings, writing and stamps.
Check out this clever ideas using lint rollers as stamp rollers:
Give each student several numbers from 0-100. The idea being that the class collectively assembles a large hundreds chart (on the back of each present, students draw or write about what is inside the present).
Each day of the last week, randomly pick a few gift tags out of the stocking and solve the number clues, revealing a number on the hundreds chart. Turn over the card to reveal the present that was gifted to the class by one of them.
Find this resource by clicking HERE.
