Christmas Themed Literacy and Math Centers

This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA. 

As soon as your kindergarten students return from their Thanksgiving break, nearly all of their attention is taken up with thinking about and talking about Christmas. It can be incredibly hard to keep their focus on their academics, but you don’t have a month to lose as you build their foundational math and literacy skills. Fortunately, these Christmas themed literacy and math centers will allow them to keep dreaming of the big day while practicing and developing their key skills. In these Christmas themed activities for kindergarten, you’ll find 10 excellent activities that have plenty of replay value:

1. Elf-abet Handwriting Strips: one of the key skills for your students to master this year is being able to master the alphabet. These cute elf theme Christmas literacy task cards give them the opportunity to trace then write the whole uppercase “elf-abet” by themselves.

2. Beginning Sound Gifts: next up is some beginning sounds practice. Each Christmas gift has a picture of a different item, and your students need to say the word out loud, listening carefully for the beginning letter sound. They will then need to write out this letter on the gift tag. As an alternative, you can use letter stamps or letter tiles.

3. Christmas CVC Write the Room: you have to bring some movement to your Christmas themed literacy and math centers, and this write the room scavenger hunt will have your little ones up and moving, looking to write CVC words from the pictures. 

4. Santa’s List of Letters: this letter recognition task goes well with the Elf-abet Handwriting Task. Your students will love helping Santa to match the lowercase and uppercase version of each of the letters. 

5. Read, Build and Write Word Mats: building sight words is a great way to build mastery and develop reading fluency. I have included word cards for Dolch pre-primer, Dolch primer and Fry first 100.

6. Christmas Lights Sorting Mat: the concept of odd and even requires a whole range of essential kindergarten skills from counting to classification. Students will sort the lightbulbs into piles of odd and even numbers to develop this skill. 

7. Build A Number Santa: you have to bring the jolly old elf into your classroom at some point to build engagement. Your students will love piecing him together with different forms of the same number written on his different body parts. Work on dice representation, tally marks and number names all at the same time!

8. Santa Sleigh and Reindeer Number Cards: this is one of the most versatile Christmas themed activities for kindergarten in the packet! It’s a simple pile of numbers written on cards showing Santa and his sleigh. You could use them for counting, ordering or even practicing number bonds to 10 and your students will love to play with them each time round. 

9. Christmas Ornament Counting: clip cards are a great way for students to self-check their own learning and build their own understanding. In these simple task cards, they’ll need to count up the ornaments on the Christmas tree, and then put a mark or peg on the correct answer, which you’ll have written on the back for them to check. 

10. Ginger-Bond Cookies: finally, you’ll finish up this bumper set of Christmas themed literacy and math centers with some dedicated number bonds to 10 work. Students will work out what number pairs to make the larger one shown and write it in the gingerbread cookie belly. You can then color their finished work for extra Christmas classroom decorations. There is a task card version and worksheet version included for this game.

>>> Grab the Christmas Themed Centers for Math and Literacy!! 

Other Free Christmas Printables You’ll Love:

1) Christmas Printable Worksheet Pack – 50 pages of worksheets for mastering the alphabet, early math skills and more!

2) Christmas I Spy – This Christmas-themed I Spy is perfect for keeping little ones busy during the holidays.

3) Santa Land Spot the Difference – This game of visual discrimination will keep your kids busy for a while! Find the 10 differences between these 2 pictures of Santa Land.

4) Build A Number Santa – Preschool and kindergarten kids will match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus in this fun printable Christmas activity.

5) Gingerbread Number Puzzle Strips – Set of 3 differentiated gingerbread-themed number puzzles including one with dice representation.

Books About Christmas That We Love:

Browse My Most Popular Math Printables:

1) Parking Cars Tracing Lines – More than 10 different tracing line patterns to choose from, all of which help with pencil control.

2) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – 3 different scarecrow-themed image sets that they will arrange from smallest to biggest.

3) Bumblebee Addition Game – Solve the sum and help the bee land on the correct flower!

4) Farm Shapes Mats – Use playdough, pompoms, stickers etc to learn 2D shapes.

5) Popsicle Stick Number Formation – Kids will love forming the numbers 1 to 10 when ice cream and popsicles are involved!

6) Valentines Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of mixed literacy and math activities.

7) Zoo Animals Number Puzzle Strips – Complete these cute puzzles and learn the numbers 1 to 20.

8) Counting Colorful Bugs – This printable book will help kids count to 10 while also learning about color words.

9) Humpty Dumpty Numbers – In this printable game, your students will practice number recognition using 1 dice or simple addition when using 2 dice.

10) Build A Number Santa – Match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus

Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:

1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.

2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.

3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!

4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.

5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!

6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.

7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.

8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.

9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.

10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.

>>> Grab the Christmas Themed Centers for Math and Literacy!!