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Christmas Activities for Kids. Five fun Christmas activities to do with your little ones and family this holiday season.
Christmas activities are a fun tradition to do with your children each year. Here are five simple ideas for things you can do with your children this year. See my post Family Christmas Traditions for more ideas for fun traditions you can do with your children this year.
5 Fun Christmas Activities for Kids
Santa Christmas Countdown
If your children are like mine, they can’t wait for Christmas to come and want to know every day how many more days until Christmas. A countdown activity is a perfect way to help your child see how many days are left until Christmas.
You will need:
- some lined paper
- white paper
- red paper
- glue
- black pen
- scissors
Cut your papers out to create a Santa face and beard. Number each line to match how many days until Christmas. Let your child glue the pieces together. Hang it somewhere in your home (like the fridge).
Each day, have your child use the scissors to cut off one line from Santa’s beard. This is a great art activity to teach number sense, colors, and work fine motor skills.
Gingerbread Man Math
- Gingerbread man drawn with numbers inside
- Do-a-dot markers
- Dice
METHOD:
Christmas Wreath Ornament
Children love to make an ornament that they can hang on the tree. Hanging ornaments on the tree is a great fine motor skills activity, and most Christmas crafts work the fine motor skills, also.
- green foam
- red ribbon for bow
- string for hanging
- glue
- desired decorations
- scissors
- Gather supplies
- Cut out wreath (you can use straight scissors, but decorative scrapbooking scissors will add some character)
Reindeer Ornament
- yarn or string
- three craft sticks
- two eyes
- glue
- pom-pom
- paint
- paint brush
- pipe cleaner.
Have your child paint the craft sticks brown. Let dry. Then, have your child glue them into a triangle shape. Add a nose, eyes, and antlers. Glue a string on the back. Let dry and hang your ornament!
Rice Krispie Treat Christmas Tree
AGE RANGE: as soon as you start allowing them to help cook. I would say most 15-18 month olds and older can do this.
SUPPLIES:
- Saucepan. You could use as small as a 3 quart, but I like to use a 6 quart so you can stir without spilling. Helpful for me and the children 🙂
- Rice Krispies: 5 cups. I always buy the inexpensive rice krispies in the bags (like Malt-O-Meal).
- Marshmallows: 4 cups miniature (which equals about half a bag) or 40 regular.
- Butter: 1/4 cup.
- Green food coloring.
- Candies to decorate tree (like red candies or string licorice)–optional.
- Regular size marshmallows for base of tree–optional.
- Toothpicks–optional.
- Cookie sheet.
ACTIVITY:
- Get cookie sheet out and grease or spray with non-cooking spray.
- Melt butter in saucepan.
- Add marshmallows. As you are measuring, be sure to incorporate math skills. For the younger toddler, it might just be saying “We need to fill this up 5 times. Can you help me count?” As your child gets older, you can increase the difficulty of this. Brayden (4.5) is quite good at math and can do simple addition in his head. He has also started learning about fractions (thanks to my husband the engineer). When we made these, I used a Pyrex measuring cup that measures up to 2 cups. I told him we needed 4 cups of marshmallows. I then told him our measuring cup held two cups and showed him where the two cup mark was. I also showed him where the 1 cup mark was. I asked him how many times we needed to fill it up, and to what, to reach five cups.
- Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth and all marshmallows have melted.
- Add food coloring, continuing to stir constantly.
- Remove from heat.
- Measure out Rice Krispies. Do the same for measuring this as you did with the marshmallows. Use this as a teaching opportunity.
- Add Rice Krispies. Stir until well coated.
- Butter hands. I just sprayed cooking spray on our hands.
- Put a spoonful of the mixture on the cookie sheet and have your child form into the shape of a Christmas tree. You might want to show him how first. Also, it might be hot, so check to make sure it is cool enough before letting your child touch it. This is a good opportunity to talk about three dimensional shapes.
- Continue until mixture is gone. Re-butter hands as needed.
- Decorate trees if desired.
- Once formed, you can add the tree base by sticking a toothpick in a large marshmallow and then into the base of the tree.
- Eat and enjoy!
Please note that these are not gooey rice krispie treats. These have less butter and less marshmallows to help the tree stay up, but it has less fat, right? Right? 🙂 You could serve these at your holiday party!
Conclusion
I hope you have found some fun ideas to do with your family this holiday season.
You may or may not know, but for many years, I ran a learning development activities blog for children. I wrote it with a few other moms. It is still out there if you want to check it out: Children’s Learning Activities.
I also have an eBook I co-wrote that is a full 52 week curriculum of a prechool homeschool. Everything is planned out for you, and the best pat is you can do it with multiple ages of children! So you can do learning time with your 18 month old, three year old, and 5 year old all at the same time. Get your copy here:
Valerie, also known as The Babywise Mom, is the mother to four children. She has been blogging on Babywise and general parenting since 2007. She has a degree in technical writing and loves using those skills to help parents be the best parents they can be! Read her book, The Babywise Mom Nap Guide, to get help on sleep from birth through the preschool years. You can also find her writing at Babywise.life, Today Parenting, and Her View From Home. Read more about Valerie and her family on the About page. Follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram for more tips and helps.
