Celebrating the holiday season is so much fun in the classroom! There's a lot to do, but the kiddos are excited and everything feels more festive. With just a few weeks left before winter break, it can be hard to balance all those fun activities with meaningful, educational lessons. In my classroom, I like to blend the two together so we can celebrate Christmas while working on key skills in a fun way! To help get you started, I'm sharing a few of my favorite fun Christmas math activities and simple crafts!
Balancing Holiday Fun with Learning
If you teach in the primary classroom, I'm sure you can relate to feeling overwhelmed at times. We cover a lot of information and during the busy holiday season it really adds up! With all the standards we're trying to target, it can be hard to balance learning goals with those cutesy, fun holiday activities that students love. I'm a firm believer that we can have both, it just takes some careful planning and multi-use resources!
In my room, I'm a big fan of using lessons that have a seasonal flair to them and often include a craft of some kind. These types of activities are always my students' favorites! They allow us to get in the holiday spirit while also making sure to cover key concepts.
At Christmas time, I love to use a couple of fun activities that focus on practicing place value. This skill requires lots of practice for first graders to master. Using festive, Christmas-themed activities is a great way to help students get plenty of practice in during the holiday season.
Christmas Math Poke Cards
This interactive place value math center is one of my favorites to use year after year. It's very hands-on, which my first graders LOVE, and gives them plenty of place value practice, which makes me happy too! Not to mention, this center activity is filled with fun Christmas clipart to help bring on the merriment!
To prep for this activity, I laminate the set of place value task cards. Next, I hole punch each one and mark the correct answer on the back to make this activity self-checking. To use, students will solve the problem on their card and use a thin straw or coffee stirrer to poke through the hole for their answer.
Next, they flip the card and check to see if their answer was right! This is a great activity for center time since kiddos can check their work independently. I also provide them with recording sheets to keep track of their answers for each card.
Christmas Number Sorting Center
I love using sorting games to practice place value as well. During the holidays, I love this fun Christmas Sorting Center. This activity focuses on showing numbers in multiple ways. Some of the cards show expanded form, some have tens and ones' blocks, and some have objects in groups of tens and ones.
To play, I will set up the numeral cards in a pocket chart and have the children sort out the other cards to each correct numeral. To start, you can just use one set of cards. Once kiddos have the hang of it, use all the cards to create more of a challenge. I also give kiddos worksheets to go along with this activity so they can record their answers. This gives me an easy way to assess their understanding later.
Christmas Math Number Game
Another student favorite we use in the classroom is this Decorating with Numbers Gameboard. This game can be used as an individual center activity or played with a partner. To play, students will roll a die and move their game marker that number of spaces. Then they read the number of tens and ones on the space they landed on and find a tree with the matching number in the middle of the gameboard.
Students repeat this until all the trees are covered. The person with the most trees covered wins! This game is a fun and festive way to work on identifying tens and ones and writing whole numerals. I tend to pull this game out on Fridays and have kiddos partner up for a quick place value review before the weekend!
Low-Prep Christmas Craft Activities
This time of year is super busy as it is, and I know the pressure we can end up feeling to have a "picture-perfect" classroom that's decorated from top to bottom. If you find the time to do this, more power to you! But, if you find yourself in an extra busy state, low-prep crafts will save the day! I love using low-prep, holiday-themed crafts during Christmas because they can be an instant, festive bulletin board display without a ton of fuss. The crafts I like to use also help kiddos continue to practice place value skills, so that's a huge added bonus as well.
Place Value Train Crafts
In my room, I like to use a couple of train crafts that are super simple to prep. All you need to do is copy off the pages for each kiddo and then let them complete the project by coloring, cutting, and gluing down on a piece of colored construction paper.
Check Out These Christmas Math Activities and Crafts
If you're looking for some simple, low-prep center activities and crafts to try in your classroom this Christmas, you can check out all of the lessons we used in The Chocolate Teacher TPT store. I love that these activities bring some festive, Christmas fun to the classroom while still helping my firsties master place value! Happy Holidays!
Save This Post
Don't forget to pin this post on your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you'll have easy access to these fun Christmas math activities and crafts!
0 Comments