Early finisher activities are a must for the holiday season. Your class is going to have a variety of things going on, like holiday projects, mid-year progress check-ins, student assessments, programs, and so much more! It would be wise to always have something readily available for students to work on as they finish tasks or have downtime. Check out some of these holiday-themed early finisher activities that will challenge your students, keep them engaged, and practicing critical thinking skills.
No-Prep Early Finisher Activities
I am going to talk about some printable activities from a new set of Christmas-themed early finishers, plus digital activities similar to each.
Symmetry Stories
Symmetry Stories are a fun, open-ended way to encourage narrative writing. Students will finish an illustration using symmetry, then create a narrative story. Because the activity is open-ended, students will be able to work within their ability levels. Feel free to display a mentor text or a bulleted list of expectations for this early finisher activity.
If you’d like to use an online symmetry drawing game, try Peg + Cat’s Symmetry Painter on PBSkids! Then, students can create a story from their digital drawing.
Logic Problems
Logic problems are great for critical thinking skills. Students will solve addition facts for each frame. Then, they will use clues to complete the puzzle. These are both enjoyable and challenging!
For digital logic activites, try MentalUp!
Comic Strip Stories
Students will fill in the comic strip with their own dialogue, coloring in each illustration. Then, they will create a narrative story to accompany the comic strip. These are fun and functional, and are an excellent activity to practice sensory details and descriptive writing!
Here is an online comic creator tool, from ReadWriteThink!
Crack-the-Code and Color & Graph
These two math-based activities are going to have your students practicing their critical thinking skills. Crack-the-Code Math requires students to use a key to decipher addition and subtraction problems. Then, they will solve for the answers. While, Color & Graph has students interpretting numerical data, coloring and counting pictures, and creating graphs to display the data.
Here is a code-breaking game from PBSkids.org, a graphing activity from GenerationGenius, and another graphing activity from ABCya!
Directed Drawings
I’ve talked about directed drawings before! Students will follow directions, one step at a time, in order to create a final picture. With these directed drawings, they will create a narrative story about the illustration, as well.
You all know my favorite video directed drawings are from ArtKidsHub!
Christmas Early Finisher Activities
If you’re interested in the activities found in today’s post, they can all be found in this Christmas Early Finisher Activities set! There are 18 early finisher activities for your students to complete for enrichment and extra critical thinking skills.
Other No-Prep Early Finisher Activities
If you are in search of Early Finisher activities that won’t require a ton of prep, look at these simple print-and-go resources. Activities range from Logic Problems to Funny Fill-Ins. All of these activities are great additions to your day-to-day instruction. They will challenge your students AND keep them engaged.
