Christmas Ideas
Christmas time in the classroom! What a wonderful time of the year! Such a great time to have fun with your students and finish the year off with some Christmas activities and craft. In this blog, I have listed some of the activities I have done with my kinder students. Most of the ideas are easy art activities using resources from around the classroom or recycled materials!
- Gingerbread men
How cute are these little gingerbread men? We made these using brown cardboard, a black marker to draw the face on, pom poms for buttons and glitter!
2. Christmas Collage
We love using recycled materials in the classroom and cardboard makes the best canvas! We used cardboard as the base for these Christmas collages and used a variety of collage materials including sequins, glitter, crepe paper, and recycled wrapping paper.
3. Christmas Themed Drawing
By the end of the kindergarten year, many of my students have become very confident writers and drawers who are keen to showcase their talents. Last year we did Christmas drawings such as Santa, Christmas trees and Rudolph. We used black marker and watercolours for these artworks.
4. Christmas Bracelets
To make our Christmas bracelets we used strips of paper we had from a previous activity and collage material such as Christmas sequins, glitter and recycled wrapping paper. Such a simple activity and my students loved wearing these around their wrists!
5. Stick Man
Stick Man by Julia Donaldson has a christmas twist where Stick Man is trying to make it home before Christmas comes. It is one of my favourite books to read with my class around Christmas time. We used the book as inspiration for some loose part play to create our own stick men.
6. Snowman loose parts
Even though it doesn’t snow in Australia at Christmas time, snowmen are often part of the books we read around celebrating Christmas. AND, if your students are anything like my students and are obsessed with Olaf from ‘Frozen’, they will love this loose parts activity! Students were invited to make their own snowmen using loose parts such as gems, sticks, bells, googly eyes on a snowman template.
7. 10 Little Elves
There are many fabulous Christmas themed books and this is one of my favourites! Around Christmas time, I love using this book to teach numeracy concepts such as counting, subtraction and numeral recognition. I photocopied the front of this book to make little puppets to use for storytelling and engagement with the book.
8. Recycled Collage Christmas Trees
More cardboard craft! I told you I love using cardboard! This time, we cut the cardboard into triangles to make Christmas trees. We used different Christmas collage to decorate our trees and OF COURSE, we added a star on top!
9. Christmas Sticks
This was an extension of our stick man loose part activity, which began a stick obsession. We are all about following the children’s interests in the early years so that’s how ‘Christmas sticks’ came about! We painted the sticks using watercolours and wrapped them in beautiful shiny wool and sprinkled glitter!
10. Making Christmas Cards
Christmas time is a great way for us to show appreciation for our loved ones. We made our families Christmas cards and children had the opportunity to practice their drawing and writing skills.
11. Jingle Bells
We integrated science into our focus on Christmas by exploring magnetic forces. We investigated magnets by using magnetic wands and bells. This was a great hands-on activity and was perfect for a ‘not so traditional’ Christmas activity.
12. Letters to Santa
As I mentioned before, by the end of the kindergarten year, many of my kinder children are keen writers! We set up this writing table as an opportunity for children to make letters for Santa. Children were invited to write letters to Santa, put it in an envelope and post in the post box that we made! A perfect way for children to engage with literacy in personally meaningful ways!
13. Christmas Necklaces
CARDBOARD AGAIN! We made these beautiful necklaces using cardboard as the base and Christmas collage. There is something very special about wearing your own creations!
14. Christmas Trees
You’ve guessed it… cardboard again! I hope you’ve been hoarding boxes! (I know I have, haha!) We made these simple Christmas trees by painting our cardboard, wrapping in wool and adding a star!
15. Rudolph Paintings
Similar to our previously shown Santa drawings, we made our Rudolph artworks using black markers and watercolours. Aren’t children’s drawings just the cutest ever?
16. Christmas Tree Hammer Challenge
Tap Tap resources are always a favourite in my classroom. We gave the children a challenge to create their own Christmas trees using the shapes! We embedded numeracy into this activity by encouraging children to count how many pieces they used.
17. Christmas Tree Names
As a collaborative activity, we made our names on Christmas trees. It was interesting to see who had the tallest/shortest Christmas tree that represented the longest/shortest name. It was an opportunity for literacy and numeracy concepts to be embedded within an activity.
I hope you find these Christmas ideas useful! Let me know which ones you get to try this festive season! Merry Christmas!
