During the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are many free Christmas math activities that will capture your children’s attention! I have listed my favorite Christmas themed activities for all grade levels pre K- elementary. Many are appropriate for multi age activities. I used many of these to run a Christmas break math camp for all ages kindergarten-6th grade. I have also used them with homeschoolers in a multi age setting. Many are also appropriate for the classroom, particularly in a small group setting.
I will do a separate post for winter themed activities not related to a specific holiday.
Free Literature Based Math Activities
Math Geek Mama has a free printable math game (addition and subtraction of up to 4 digits) to go with the book Christmas Tree Farm. In this game players roll dice to determine how many tree seedlings they will start their farm with. They then draw cards and use a recording sheet to determine how many trees are lost or planted over ten years of farming.
After reading The Gingerbread Man or Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby or Gingerbread Friends, there are MANY free gingerbread themed math activities to do. Math Wire has a great collection of Gingerbread Math for all ages, which includes everything from counting games to probability and coordinate graphing.
If you teach pre K or kindergarten see Mrs. Fantastic’s post Gingerbread Math . Other great options for young learners are these printable addition puzzles or these gingerbread pattern cards and addition mats designed to be used with Dots or gumdrops.
If you read Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer have some physics fun as you try this Rudolph Balloon Race activity from Steam Powered Family.
Math Crafts
Christmas Themed Manipulatives
Use a styrofoam tree from the dollar store as a geoboard.
Use red and green M&Ms (or small pom poms if you don’t want to use candy) in your ten frames or as bingo counters (make and print your own Bingo cards here for any concept you want).
Open a bag of Christmas bows and make a graph of the colors. (This blog post has you put painters tape on the floor for a young student to physically make the graph.)
Fill refillable plastic ornaments with small Christmas items and have children estimate how many are inside.
Christmas counting activity tray for younger children
Make shapes from jingle bells and pipe cleaners
Santa’s Beard Roll and Count activity with mini marshmallows (or cotton balls.) To adjust for older students have them add or multiply the numbers on two dice and cover the sum or product.
Use Hershey kisses (circle garage sale price stickers fit perfectly) to play a Memory game with facts in any operation.
Free Christmas STEM Challenges
Clothespin Circuit Christmas Tree
Another simple (no prep) but fun Christmas STEM challenge I have used is to make the tallest Christmas tree possible using only mini marshmallows and toothpicks!
Free Christmas Printables
I have chosen activities that are not just worksheets with some Christmas illustrations!
Adaptable to any age/level
Decorate a Christmas Tree Number Sense activity (adaptable for any age/level) from Math Geek Mama
Printable Christmas Coding game in 3 levels
2 level Christmas I Spy printable
Christmas 3D shape ornament templates
Lower Elementary
Many free quality Christmas math and literacy printables for kindergarten at The Printable Princess
Christmas math dice games for preschool-3rd grade
Christmas pattern block mats (snowman, gifts, wreath, snowflake, tree)
Upper Elementary/Middle School
Logic puzzles (grids and Suduko) with a Christmas theme
Number pattern Christmas tree coloring activity
Printable (digital version also available) game to practice multiples, prime and square numbers
Christmas themed coordinate graphing, addition/subtraction trees and dot to dots on Math Salamanders
Elf Toy Inventory with growing number patterns
Christmas tree cartesian art for middle school
Free Online Games
Mr. Nussbaum Math Christmas Games
Holiday Games on Math Playground
Terrific puzzles for making kids (gasp!) actually think! Still training my middle schoolers, but the fairly simple math allows for focus on the thinking/problem-solving aspect of the puzzles! Thanks for creating them — I use them all the time for warmups.