Are you ready for our Top 8 Christmas classroom activities?
As the Christmas holidays draw near we know teachers are anticipating Christmas classroom activities as much as their students. If you too are eager to bring some festive cheer into your classroom, we’re here to help!
From Christmas quizzes with a twist to festive story prompts, we’re sharing the best Christmas classroom games for getting students engaged and motivated.
Quizalize’s Top 8 Christmas classroom activities that students love:
Musical Christmas Quizzes
One of the first signs of Christmas is the festive music. Whether you save the Merry tunes for December or start playing them as early as September, why not turn it into one of your Christmas classroom activities?
Have a playlist of Christmas hits and carols ready, but hidden from your students. Then let them know they will hear the first five seconds of a song and need to write down their guess for the name of the song and artist (don’t forget to ask them to number their answers to be checked at the end).
This game is great fun if you need classroom Christmas party ideas!
Advent Hunt
This is one of our Christmas classroom games that can be tailored to various syllabus topics.
Fold in half A5 pieces of paper and write the numbers 1 to 24 on the outside, reminiscent of an advent calendar. Come up with questions each with a different answer from 1 to 24. Write the first question on the inside of any calendar door. From then onwards, you must write the next question inside the door showing the last question’s answer. Stick the advent doors randomly around the classroom.
With the students starting at different doors, watch as the Christmas quiz questions lead them around the classroom from one clue to the next. The aim is to be the first to work out the correct order of doors.
Classroom Christmas Crafts
More artistic students might enjoy making classroom Christmas crafts. You can bring some festive wrapping paper and allow the students to cut small squares/rectangles from it to use. They can make origami stars or snowflakes or paper chains. Students might also use tissue paper, sticks and string to make simplified parol stars. If you need classroom Christmas party ideas, these would make the perfect decorations!
Interactive Christmas Quizzes
These are great if you don’t have time for preparing activities, as there are lots of pre-made Christmas quiz questions that you can play with your class on Quizalize, and the students can watch their scores in real-time on the big screen at the front of the classroom.
Simply assign a quiz to your students and they can access it from any device – no apps to install! Students visit zzi.sh, enter their class code (shown on the ‘Launch Game View’ screen) followed by their name, and then they can play the quiz.
You can also create your own Christmas quizzes that incorporate the current topic you’re teaching and set them as homework!
Christmas Consequences Story
Christmas classroom games like Consequences can lead to lots of giggles and helps students practice imagination and collaboration. Each student starts a story with the first prompt “On Christmas day last year”. After writing a character/celebrity name, they fold the top of the paper so that their writing is hidden and pass it on to the person on their right. The students continue to answer each prompt and pass the story on. Encourage them to be imaginative/descriptive and at the end they can read their nonsense stories to the class.
Prompts:
1. On Christmas day last year [person’s name]
2. Met [person’s name]
3. At [location]
4. While wearing [description of outfit]
5. Then Person 1 said [dialogue]
6. And Person 2 said [dialogue]
7. Then [character action/event]
8. Because [explanation]
9. In the end [consequence/event].
Secret Santa
If you’re looking for Christmas classroom activities that teach your students that Christmas is about giving not receiving, then organize a Secret Santa a couple weeks before the holidays. The game involves buying gifts, so students should vote on a price (e.g., $5) and be allowed to opt out.
Place all the students’ names into a lucky dip. The kids should then take turns to pick out names until everyone has another person’s name. The key here is that it is secret! The students agree on a future date that they must bring a thoughtful gift for the person whose name they drew. To ensure everyone gets a mysterious gift, the teacher should privately note down the Secret Santa lucky dip and only allow students to pick up their gift from the pile if they brought one.
Christmas Word Swap
This is another one of our Christmas classroom games that can be customized to test students on any syllabus topic.
Write a statement or definition on the board and replace one or two words with Christmas words. Then get the students to guess what the words should have been and/or what is being defined. For example: “When water turns into steam it changes reindeer”. The swapped word is “state” and the word being defined is “evaporation”.
World Cup Sweepstake
With the first winter World Cup, perhaps this year your students are anticipating a festive football final.
Get involved with the excitement by organising a sweepstake. Divide the countries that qualified among the students randomly. If some teams have already been knocked out, ignore them. You can always have multiple students per team. The students could track the matches on a chart on the wall and the winners could get a festive prize.
To make the football fun educational, set the class games for reporting in class, such as our interactive World Cup-themed quizzes on Quizalize alongside Quizalize Games Goalzz!
Are you ready to get Christmassy and use some of our ideas in your classroom?
We really hope these suggestions are helpful when planning educational and fun Christmas activities for your classroom!
To play our Christmas, World Cup, and millions of other ready-made, curriculum-tagged quizzes in your classroom, just sign-in to your Quizalize account and get quizzing in less than one minute. Quizalize Games host a whole suite of games for reporting in class – your students are going to love them!
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