Ready to Teach Christmas Activities for First and Second grades
Whether you started pulling out the decorations the day after Halloween, or you waited until Thanksgiving, we support you! The three of us love this time of year. From trees to yummy treats and yes, every single feel good Hallmark movie, it really is a great time of year!
As teachers, we remember the other side of this season: trying to survive the month of December. By Thanksgiving, we had all reached our point of burnout and were literally counting down the days to Christmas break. Are you feeling this way now?
Did you have your students make a red and green countdown chain with your class more for you than them? We get it and we understand. We also have several ideas to help the days go a bit quicker.
Below you will find all of our favorite December activities to keep students engaged everyday of the month. These aren’t your typical Christmas Worksheets for first grade either. These are activities that will keep students engaged in learning and having fun up until the bell rings for break.
From December themed read-alouds, Learning Quests that teach students about winter holidays around the world, and a 12 day Countdown to Christmas, we have several READY TO TEACH activities for every first and second grade classroom!
How to Teach First Graders about Holidays Around the World
How to Teach Holidays Around the World
Teach in a school that’s not big on Christmas? Not to worry, this Holidays around the World Learning Quest Bundle is the perfect solution!
If you’ve never used one of our learning quests, they are mini-units that help students explore a topic in-depth. Every learning quest is designed to give you flexibility in how you want to use it in your classroom. Students can complete the entire learning quest in one day (a great option for days when you are feeling a bit overwhelmed or under the weather) or over the course of several days.
The Holidays around the World bundle includes 5 different learning quests!
Each learning quest can be taught on its own or alongside the others. You can have students complete quests individually, in groups, or even do one together as a class.
The best part? All learning quests are all ready to teach. Just upload into Google Slides or Seesaw, or try it in Lumio! Every learning quest is also printable.
While every learning quest has a different focus for learning they all follow a similar format. This supports students in becoming more proficient at completing learning quests independently, the more they use them. Learn more about our why learning quests are gold here.
Each quest includes a focus activity, informational text with pre-recorded audio that can be read aloud to students, note taking sheets, activities with moveable pieces, vocabulary, link to an informational video, writing response, and a quiz. All the activities are unique to each topic.
Here are some examples of unique activities you will find in each holiday quest:
- Kwanzaa Set the Table Activity (with moveable pieces)
- Seven Principles of Kwanzaa
- Hanukkah scene activity (with moveable pieces)
- Dreidel infographic and writing activity
- Different Santas infographic
- Deck the Halls activity (with moveable pieces)
- Fill the Piñata activity
- Sequence the Events of Las Posadas activity (with moveable pieces)
- 5 Days of Diwali infographic and sequencing activity
- Design a Rangoli activity (with moveable pieces)
Want to spread out a learning quest over several days? Combine it with a read-aloud to give you a full day’s worth of activities for several days.
Holiday Read-Alouds for First and Second Graders
Read-alouds are one of our favorite learning activities to use around the holidays. One, it is easy to extend a read-aloud for one book over the course of an entire week. This makes it a lot easier to plan lessons during a busy time. Two, students love holiday books! When students love books, they are more likely to listen and stay engaged. Three, the craftivity! Everyone loves a good craft around the holidays, but how much better is it when it’s directly connected to student learning!
Here are our 6 favorite books to use for read-alouds during the month leading up to Christmas:
- Sad Santa by Tad Carpenter
- How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
- Turkey Claus by Wendi Silvano
- Memoirs of an Elf by Devin Scillian
- Samurai Santa by Rubin Pingk
- Catch that Cookie by Henry Greville
- Olive the Other Reindeer By J.Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh
Remember, the goal of this month is how to teach in a way that is easy, effective, and engaging! When it comes to read-alouds our best advice on this is to use a similar format for ALL your books! Choose 3-5 activities that you can always do, regardless of what book you are using. This will give you a clear format to follow and take-away the spinning wheels of “what to do?”
For example, all of our read-alouds begin with text dependent questions and are followed by a graphic organizer that helps solve a problem or analyze a character (depending on the book). Every read-aloud ends with a writing activity and a craft.
Within each read-aloud, there is room to add additional activities but the overall structure is the same. One of the best ways to think about it is that each activity will give you a lesson for one day of the week. Then you end up with 3-5 reading lessons! Here are some examples of how we used this structure to create read-alouds for a few of these fun holiday books.
Memoirs of an Elf by Devin Scillian
- Text Dependent Questions
- Sequence of Events Graphic Organizer
- Countdown Sequence Cards
- Santa Graphic Organizer
- Writing in Response to Text Pages
- Selfie Craftivity Instructions and Pattern
- Bulletin Board Title
How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
- Text Dependent Questions
- Santa Jobs Graphic Organizer
- How Santa’s Jobs Prepared Him Graphic Organizer
- Help Wanted Ad
- Application Writing Page
- Santa Craftivity Instructions and Pattern
Olive the Other Reindeer By J.Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh
- Text Dependent Questions
- Problem/Solution Graphic Organizer
- Feelings Graphic Organizer
- Character Close Up Graphic Organizer
- Opinion Writing in Response to Text Page
- Craftivity Pattern and Instructions
Read-alouds really are the winner when it comes to being able to create several lessons from one resource – a book! They are not the only way to do this though. See how we use a similar idea in our FAVORITE December activity, The 12 Days of Christmas!
How to Keep Students Engaged before Winter Break
There is really no way to gauge how your students are going to behave leading up to Christmas break. Depending on your group of students this year, they could be a super engaged bunch that will stay focused the entire time. If this is true, how would it feel?!
More likely than not, your students will be so excited about the upcoming break that they will be a little bit rambunctious. Especially during those last 2 weeks!
Those two very special weeks leading up to the final school bell before break is what inspired our resource that truly keeps kids engaged until the last minute: The “12 Days of Christmas in the Classroom” countdown.
Whether your students are distracted by upcoming events at home or all the holiday events at school, once you introduce the first day of activities students will be hooked! They will rush to school excited to learn about the activity for the day. Not to mention, parents, fellow teachers, and even the principal will be impressed with your ability to keep students both engaged and excited to learn during this time!
This bundle consists of 12 themed days. Each themed day has activities in writing, reading, and math!
Here’s a quick overview of what you will find in our 12 Days of Christmas Bundle:
- Candy Cane Day
- Christmas Carol Day
- Christmas Tree Day
- Christmas Cookie Day
- Elf Day
- Gingerbread Day
- Kindness Day
- Polar Express Day
- Reindeer Day
- Santa Claus Day
- Snow Day
- Stocking Day
Each day’s lesson plan includes:
- a reading and writing activity with differentiated pages
- a math activity with differentiated pages
- a variety of other fun and educational suggestions that match the theme.
We have provided all the learning materials you need to make these 12 days successful. The only extra prep you need to do is find some type of container to store each day’s materials. We purchased 12 gift bags from our local dollar store. They were 2 for $1. You can staple or glue the daily labels onto the bags.
The holidays should be a fun time for you and creating a fun learning environment shouldn’t take away from your personal time! When you are planning lessons for this time of year, remember to leave school at school. Choose a few activities that are fun, but won’t take time away from enjoying the season to prepare. If you choose to use some of these resources that are already prepared and ready to go, we hope that they help you come to school feeling ready to teach and leave school ready to enjoy the season!
