3 Christmas Classroom Activities

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! With the promise of the Christmas holidays arriving soon, excitement and festive cheer is spreading throughout Kent’s schools. If you’re looking for some easy, engaging and, most importantly, Christmassy activities for your class over the last few weeks of term, here are 3 ideas your students are bound to enjoy:

1) Make Christmas Cards

Making Christmas Cards is a go-to activity for primary teachers in classrooms across the country, and it’s easy to see why! Encouraging creative and artistic skills, along with a focus on written language, this is a great way to put learning into action and create something personal for parents and carers. 

Why not run through commonly seen images, symbols and motifs found on Christmas cards and explain a bit about the history and culture behind them first? You can do the same thing with traditional Christmas phrases and words found on Christmas cards, such as ‘seasons greetings’ and delve into the meaning of these phrases. Your students can then choose which Christmas imagery and wording to use if they want to, or they can think outside of the box and draw what Christmas means to them! 

2) Play ‘Roll a Snowman’

A great way to get your students in the festive spirit is by playing educational games. ‘Roll-A-Snowman’ is a winter activity that allows students to enjoy a game with a creative twist!

1) First, get your students to work in groups of four. Every student will construct their own paper dice using the templates found here. Make sure that each team member has a different template for each snowman part (hats, scarves, face and body).

2) Now the game can begin! The student who has the dice with the body of the snowman rolls first, landing on one of six possible bodies. 

3) Whatever the dice lands on, all the group draw the body on their piece of paper. 

4) Next, the player with the face dice rolls next and everyone draws whichever face it lands on.

5) Repeat this process for all parts until everyone in the group has a complete snowman drawing. Then go again! 

6) Once everyone has drawn around 3-5 snowmen, students can add a background and colour the snowmen in. The result is a hand-drawn winter scene that will make a great keepsake for families. 

You can find this activity and more ideas on Beneylu.com. 

3) Make a Kindness Advent Calendar 

Skip the chocolate this year (we get enough of that over Christmas anyway!) and create a Kindness Calendar for December instead.

Take inspiration from the Action for Happiness December Kindness Calendar and encourage your class to work together to create their own Kindness Calendar, or get everyone to create their own calendars with their personal kindness goals on.

The calendar could include ‘do good’ activities to tick off each day in the classroom, such as ‘give at least 3 compliments to other people today’ or ‘help tidy up the classroom at the end of the day’. Once the school holidays begin, the calendar can include kindness tasks to complete at home like ‘help with the housework’ or ‘say something nice to each member of my family’. 

There won’t be any sweet treats as rewards, but students will learn that it feels good to be kind! Plus, the act of ticking off each kindness act will give them a sense of accomplishment. 

Sources:

http://www.kathleenamorris.com/2018/11/29/christmas/

https://beneylu.com/pssst/en/christmas/

In the mood to make some handmade Christmas gifts this year, either with your class or at home? Why not have a go at making these 3 Christmas Chocolate Gifts?