Christmas Theme

~ Pre-K & Preschool theme ideas for Christmas~

For more Christmas activities, see these pages: Gingerbread Theme

Sections for This Theme

Books
Rhymes
Songs
Activities
Printables
Links
Resources

Books

Gingerbread:

Christmas:

Rhymes

Little Jack Horner Nursery Rhyme

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb
And pulled out a plum
And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Songs

Gingerbread Man Song, by Mrs. Jones

Activities

Stockings

[Art]
Children cut out a Christmas stocking on red or green paper, and add Christmas confetti, sequins, and glitter.

Star Ornaments

[Art]
Children make ornaments for a parent gift, and wrap the ornaments themselves. I usually buy wooden star ornaments at a craft store. The children paint them with gold or silver paint and add touches of gold, silver, red, or green glitter glue. After the stars are dry, I tie gold or silver ribbon to the hanger.

Fine Motor Activities

[Fine Motor]
I have a list of Christmas Fine Motor Activities in an article I wrote for the Teachers.net Gazette.

Wreath Ornament

[Art, Fine Motor Skills]
Children make the wreath ornaments by stringing green pony beads on a green pipe cleaner. These are bent into a circle and twisted at the top to make the wreath. I tie a red ribbon around the top to cover up the twisted end.

Play Dough Christmas Trees

[Fine Motor]
Use green play dough with colored beads or marbles. Children can use the green play dough to make Christmas trees and add the beads or marbles for ornaments.

Decorating the Tree

I let my children decorate our classroom tree themselves. They enjoy doing it, and it is more meaningful to them when they do it themselves.

Christmas Tree Art

[Art]
To set up, I placed the collage materials on paper plates: Christmas sequins, paper Christmas cutout shapes, and Christmas craft foam shapes. I traced a large triangle on green paper for the children to cutout themselves. The paper with the numbers 1-7 says “Choose 7″ at the top. Children were able to choose whatever collage materials they wanted to use, but they were allowed no more than 7 foam shapes due to cost. Those who wanted foam shapes chose their pieces from the plate, and placed them on the numbers until they had 7 pieces (this was only used for counting them out). Children cut out and glued the green tree on the white paper, glued on the brown truck, then glued on their collage pieces.

Gift Wrapping Center

[Fine Motor Skills]
I set up a center in the classroom with wrapping paper scraps, small boxes, and tape. The children enjoy wrapping packages, and they like to find things in the classroom to wrap and pretend to give to their friends as a gift.

Silver Bell Game

[Literacy]
Label dot stickers with uppercase and lowercase letters and placed them on the bottoms of Hershey’s Kisses. Children take turns turning two up at a time to find a match. You can also label them with numerals for numeral matching; or label some with numerals and some with dots for counting and numeral matching. I used the pattern strips sheet to keep our “bells” organized while we played the game. One “bell” was placed in each square. (See this photo.)

Alphabet Christmas Tree Mats

[Literacy]
Print out the mats on cardstock paper and use some colored transparent counting chips in red, blue, and yellow. You could use any colored bingo chips, but the transparent ones allow children to see the letter through the chip. At the top of the mat, children will see the color code for marking the letters. For example, “a” is red, “b” is blue, and “c” is yellow. Children will find all of the letter a’s on the mat and cover them with a red chip, find and cover all of the b’s with a blue chip, find and cover all of the c’s with a yellow chip. This is a set of nine mats with letters A-Z.

Christmas Alphabet Mat

Jingle Bell Listening Activity

[Literacy]
Have all of the children stand or sit facing one direction. Choose one child to stand in front of the class, facing away from the others. While his/her back is turned, place a jingle bell in the hands of one child. Have all of the children grasp their hands together as if they are holding something, and have everyone shake their hands. On your signal, the child at the front will turn around and search for the ringing bell. When the bell is found, the child holding it goes to the front of the room, and the game begins again.

Story Retelling

[Literacy]
Choose a Christmas-themed book that you would consider good literature (good characters, plot, beginning, middle, end, etc.) Show the book to the children and tell them to think about what happened in the story, and the people (characters) and places they saw in the story. Think about what each character said. Give each child a piece of paper and ask them to draw something they remember from the story. Remind them that this should not be a picture of their cat or their friends, but only pictures of things from the book. After each child has illustrated the story, have them retell the story in their own words. Either record each child with a voice recorder or write their dictation on the page.

Christmas Stamping Game

[Math, Literacy]
I’ve played this stamping game different ways in my class. One option is to write numerals on a piece of paper, have children roll a dice, identify the numeral on their paper, and stamp over the numeral with a Christmas stamp. You can do the same with letters by writing letters on the paper, and have children draw letter cards from a shuffled stack. The other way to play the game, is to print out the sheet below, write numerals or letters on the Christmas trees and have children stamp the letters/numerals with a bingo marker.

Christmas Bingo

Mystery Stockings

[Math]
Children work in pairs: one child places an amount of jingle bells in a mini Christmas stocking while the other child is not looking. The other child then feels in the stocking and counts how many jingle bells. We work with 5 bells.

Nutcracker Number & Counting Match

[Math]
Print out the Number Match Set on cardstock paper. Cut apart the numeral cards, but leave the nutcrackers together on one mat. Children will count how many nutcrackers there are in each box, find the numeral, and match it to the nutcrackers.

Nutcracker Number Match

Christmas Ornament Sorting

[Math]
For this activity, print out the Christmas Tree Sorting Mat 5 times on cardstock paper. Print out the ornaments on cardstock and cut them out. Children can sort the ornaments by two attributes. These can be sorted two ways. First, have them sort them by color. Then, point out the patterns on the ornaments and have the children sort them by the pattern: small dots, large dots, checks, small stripes, wide stripes.

Christmas Sorting Mat

Discovery Stockings

[Science]
I bought mini Christmas stockings for $1 each. I place an object inside each stocking (jingle bells, block, candy, etc.) Children reach into each stocking to feel and guess what is inside without taking the object out. Photo cards of the objects give them clues as to what is inside.

Density Experiment

[Science]
For this activity, you will need four small water bottles, four bowls, funnel, water, clear shampoo, clear hair gel, corn syrup, glitter in Christmas colors, and paper towels. Place water, clear shampoo, clear hair gel, and corn syrup in the four bowls. First, show children the bowl of water and allow each child to dip one finger in and gently stir the water. Give each child a paper towel for drying off their finger. Pour the water into one of the bottles using the funnel, add a pinch or two of Christmas glitter, and attach the lid. Ask the children to predict whether the glitter will move fast or slow in the water when you shake the bottle. Shake the bottle and set it on the table so everyone can watch the glitter move. Repeat this process with the shampoo, corn syrup, and hair gel. You can also have the children move their bodies as fast or slow as they see the glitter move in each substance. These bottles can be added to the science center for further exploration (add masking tape around the lid or hot-glue the lids closed).

United Streaming Videos

[Technology]
“The Night Before Christmas”
“Holiday Facts and Fun: A Multicultural Christmas”
“Santa’s Christmas Stories”
“Too Many Tamales”

Gift Box Guessing Game

[Large Group]
Decorate a large cardboard box to look like a gift box, and play this guessing game. While everyone’s eyes are closed, tap one child on the shoulder. That child will crawl in the big gift box. Tell the children to open their eyes and guess who is missing from the circle.

Stacking Gifts

[Block Center]
Wrap cardboard boxes (large and small) in Christmas gift wrap. Add them to the block center for children to stack.

Door Decoration

The Christmas tree was made with green butcher paper (triangle) and brown construction paper (rectangle). The ornaments are colored circles and an angel cut on a die cut machine, with a glitter outline around them (glitter color matches the paper color). Each child’s name was written on an ornament.