Christmas always seems to sneak up on us! Additionally, it can sometimes be difficult to add in Christmas instruction without adding a lot to our plate. Digital activities can make your lesson planning and instruction much easier! So, this blog post will serve as a list of digital Christmas ideas!
Strong Mentor Texts
Typically, when planning, I choose my read alouds and mentors texts first! Read alouds are the perfect way to add topic-specific content to your instruction. As I mentioned in my Christmas Around the World post, I would recommend prerecording your read alouds. Further, you could YouTube videos of your favorite stories being read aloud. Then, upload them to your classroom dashboard. This is a simple way to turn a typical lesson component into a digital one. Students will love getting to hear the stories and can watch the videos as many times as they want!
The affiliate links below are to some of my favorite read alouds for Christmas.
- How to Catch an Elf by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton
- The Little Red Elf by Barbara Barbieri McGrath
- Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn Buehner
- Olive, the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Seibold and Vivan Walsh
- Celebrate Christmas by Deborah Heiligman
- Santa Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins
- The 12 Sleighs of Christmas by Sherri Duskey Rinker
Christmas Directed Drawings
Firstly, directed drawings are great for digital instruction. Students love this activity and it is great for teachers, too! After finding a directed drawing video that you’d like to use (or recording one yourself), you can post this as an activity through your online classroom portal.
Directed drawings promote listening skills, following directions, art elements, creativity, and more! Furthermore, students will be so proud to see their finished drawings displayed in the classroom or at home! I have linked four great directed drawing videos below.
Digital Christmas Reading Activities
Secondly, if you’re teaching your kiddos about Christmas traditions in America, check out this digital flip book! The interactive activity includes reading, writing, and comprehension elements. There are follow-up comprehension activities for the passage, too. So, students will simply pull it up on Google Slides, and manipulate the elements with their mouse and keyboard. Grab yours with the buttons above.
Similarly, these themed reading passages are great digital Christmas activities. They are an excellent tool for comprehension practice. In this product, you will find five Christmas stories with 2 skill-specific comprehension activities for each. One of the comprehension pages deals with answering questions about the text and the other deals with writing a response based on the passage.
And, no more collecting papers! Now that this product is digital, students can complete the story and comprehension activities and simply submit them to you!
Here, we have another Christmas-themed reading activity! These paired passages have engaging texts and skill-specific comprehension questions. With both a fiction and a nonfiction text for each topic, students will be practicing both genre skills. The 5 paired passage sets are:
- Reindeer & Reindeer Tryouts
- Christmas & Christmas in a Barn
- Hanukkah & Lighting the Menorah
- Winter & Snow Day Tricks
- Christmas Around the World & Presenting My Holiday
It may be too late for you to complete a full Digital Christmas Around the World, but it isn’t too late for you to include instruction on Christmas traditions from around the world! If you don’t have a lot of time in your December plans, I have a resource for you! This add-on pack has reading passages with comprehension questions for each country’s Christmas or holiday traditions. Above all, a comprehension set can be easily added to your plans without taking a ton of time from your typical schedule!
Games & Brain Breaks for Digital Christmas Ideas
To switch things up, incorporate some holiday-themed brain breaks! Brain break videos can be shared as links for your kiddos to do from home or pull them up on your projector at school. For instance, GoNoodle has several to choose from. Or, find some fun brain breaks on YouTube.These will surely get your kiddos up and moving!
If you’d like to add some fun to your digital Christmas activities, go no further than ABCya! Here, they have many Christmas and holiday-themed interactive games. For example, this one, Christmas Lights Math, is a Christmas activity to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math facts! Solve math problems and decorate your house. Students love this game!
- A Blocky Christmas
- Ball Ornaments Puzzle
- Christmas Crossword
- Christmas Lights Math
- Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel
Here are a few suggested resources for a Virtual Christmas!
Lastly, and for your ease, all of the products mentioned have been updated to include digital formats. Each of these digital Christmas activities is cross-curricular with a reading focus with social studies topics and information. In addition, the digital versions of these products are easy to use, share, and collect. They work with Google Classroom and Seesaw! I hope that they help lighten your load!
Links:
- Fiction Passages
- Reading Flip Book
- December Paired Passages
- Christmas Around the World Reading Passages
Want more winter holiday teaching ideas?
