Christmas Activity Plans

Download the Christmas week planning guide for simple, hands-on play and learn ideas to use at home or in your preschool classroom!

DAY 1

Christmas Tree Alphabet Hunt: Print the Christmas tree page and place it on a clipboard. Grab a crayon or marker. Walk around the room (or use during a trip to the grocery store!) looking for letters. Each time you find a letter somewhere in the room, color it in! Keep hunting for letters around the room until all of the letters on the tree are colored in.

Play Dough Christmas Cookies: Set up an invitation to create pretend Christmas cookies! Use different colored play dough and beads, buttons, foam shapes, etc. to roll out circle shaped cookies and then decorate them.

DAY 2

Ribbon Cutting Tray: Add rolls of curling ribbon to a tray with a pair of kid-friendly scissors. Preschoolers can snip and cut the ribbon into smaller pieces while working on fine motor skills. Add the ribbon pieces to a Christmas themed sensory bottle or bin!

Gumdrop Fill: Find an ice cube tray (or something similar) and gumdrops or pom poms to play with. Add each gumdrop one by one into one section of the ice cube tray. Practice counting up and down while adding and then taking out the gumdrops. Use a pinching grasp to pick up and place each one in the tray.

DAY 3

Unwrapping Numbers: This activity takes a little prep time beforehand. Wrap number magnets or even dominos individually with Christmas wrapping paper. Have your preschooler open each number present and identify the number! Write that number on a piece of paper and unwrap another one.

Walk the Tree: Using painter’s tape inside on the floor or chalk outside, create a large Christmas tree. This can simply be a triangle tree with a square trunk. Walk on the lines around the tree’s border without stopping or stepping off of the lines. To make this more challenging, change up the movement from walking to tip-toeing, sliding, or marching down the lines.

DAY 4

Deal a Tree: Find a deck of playing cards. Take all of number cards 2-10 from the deck. Create a “tree” from one suit of cards. The 2 is at the top of the tree, then the 3 and 4 are in the next row. The 4, 5, and 6 make up the third row. The 7, 8, 9, and 10 will be the bottom row of the tree. Place the remaining number cards in a pile face down. Pick a number, place it in the correct pile on top of the matching number, and play again! Keep picking and placing cards until the pile is gone.

Gingerbread Buttons: Draw or cut out a gingerbread cookie outline on brown paper. Add buttons or M&M’s to a cup or small bowl. Roll a die, count the dots, and add that number of buttons to the gingerbread cookie. Clear the buttons and play again!

DAY 5

Sticky Trees: Draw a Christmas tree on a big piece of contact paper. Cut out craft foam circles to use as the ornaments. Write the letters in your preschooler’s name on each ornament. Mix up the ornament circles. Pick up the ornaments in order, identify each letter, and add each one to the tree. Remove the ornaments and play again!

Christmas Cookies: Roll out cookie dough and use cookie cutters to cut them out into Christmas themed shapes. Bake the cookies and then use frosting and sprinkles to decorate them!

EXTRAS

Making Christmas Lists: Cut out pictures of items and toys to add to your Christmas list. Create a collage of pictures to send to Santa!

Tree Stickers: Draw a Christmas tree and decorate it with stickers. Spread the stickers out so they do not touch and count them as you put them on!

Download the Christmas theme editable planning sheet. Add learning ideas from the list below in this column or from the Christmas week activities!

Christmas Countdown Calendar

Winter Break Boredom Busters