The month of December is a crazy time of year in the classroom. The kids are excited, and the teachers are excited too. Fortunately, there’s some easy ways to add seasonal spice to your math classroom. Christmas math activities keep students engaged during this exciting time of year.
Some simple adjustments, like adding seasonal clip art to your work or bringing in some Christmas school supplies as prizes, can go a long way. You have to walk a fine line of not getting the students distracted, but at the same time bringing that seasonal cheer into the class. Students definitely appreciate the effort and will be a little more engaged at a time of year that is otherwise full of distractions.
In my class I start using Christmas and holiday activities from the first day of December. When you really look at it, there aren’t a lot of school days during December. So, let’s check out some great Christmas math ideas that are both low prep and fun for students. Which ones will you add to your class?
The 12 days of Christmas math activities:
- Christmas Math Mazes
- Math Ornament Coloring Activity
- Christmas Math Trivia Game
- Distributive Property Christmas Bingo
- Order of Operations Puzzle
- Christmas Knockout Review Games for Equations
- Christmas Tree Exit Tickets (don’t miss this one!)
- Math Challenges
- Constructing a Giant Snowflake
- Analyzing the 12 days of Christmas
- Christmas Themed Word Problems
- Real World Math Activities
- Bonus- Santa and Christmas Tree themed prizes
Let’s dive in
Let’s take a look at the each of these activities and how you can incorporate them into your classroom. Not all of the activities might fit your needs, but there’s something for everyone on this list. You’ll find sponge activities to fill those extra minutes as well as activities to last for a whole class period.
Christmas Math Activities- Mazes
Mazes work as a perfect warm-up activity for cyclical review. I have a collection of mazes with Christmas flair that all review different topics from middle grades. They take about 5 minutes to 15 minutes to complete; you could do one every day in the month of December. Here’s a quick link to the pre-made, time-saving Christmas math mazes available now.
Christmas Proportion Maze
Adding Integers Maze
Scientific Notation Christmas Maze
Two Digit Addition Maze
Want even more math mazes delivered free to your inbox? Who wouldn’t? Join the Maze of the Month club and get an exclusive free maze on middle school math concepts sent to your inbox each month.
Sign up here & join the Maze of the Month club.
Coloring Activity
Adding a little bit of coloring in the month of December is a great way to get kids engaged. A couple of years ago, I created a coloring page for practicing factors. It helped my students review finding the greatest common factor and least common multiple.
As students practice, they color in pictures of Christmas tree ornaments. In addition to being pretty, coloring makes it easy to see what students get, and what they need more practice with. Your kids will love this. To make this activity even better, this is a no-prep, print and go activity that students can work on during independent practice or in math centers.
Christmas Math Trivia Game
Christmas Guesses and Wagers is a fun trivia game to play with students during the holiday season. I use it the day before Christmas break. This game is a combination of making guesses about trivia questions, evaluating guesses from other teams, and lots of team fun. It includes 13 questions and takes about a class period to complete.
To play this game, you present students with a variety of questions that have numerical answers. Working in groups, students come up with an answer they think is reasonable. Then, you put all answers on the board and ask students to “wager” on what answer(s) they think are closest to the right answer.
This game is really easy to set up and play with your students. To read the step-by-step directions in more detail, check out the post “Christmas Trivia Game for the Secondary Classroom.”
Some of the questions that students have to guesstimate an answer for are:
- How many total gifts are given in the 12 Days of Christmas song?
- How much did the average family in the U.S. spend on Christmas present in 2015?
- In what year was the story of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer written?
While playing this game, students practice cooperating with each other and making educated guesses. Most of the questions are very obscure trivia and the goal is really about figuring out what is most reasonable.
It’s such a fun game, and it really reinforces the math practices of estimating and checking for the reasonableness of answers. Plus, it’s super low-prep to play. Find the game here!
Distributive Property Christmas Bingo
I’m not sure why, but my students love playing bingo in class. It’s no mystery why I like this game though: the students are totally engaged and working on a lot of problems in a short period of time.
We complete a distributive property bingo in December as cyclical review for this concept. What makes it Christmas is the cute holiday clipart that’s included on it. Also, I give out prizes for the kids who win, which they get pretty excited for. Whether it’s a Jolly Rancher or a Santa eraser, they love prizes.
Order of Operations Puzzle
Some concepts, like order of operations, need reviewing often. I like to practice this topic every few weeks to keep the details sharp in students’ minds. One way we review during December is with this Christmas themed order of operations puzzle. Students have to complete 12 problems and find their matching pair.
If this is the first time that you’re doing this type of puzzle, I’d suggest telling students which piece goes in the middle. Many of my students struggle with seeing what they’re doing the first time they do this type of puzzle. But once they see how the puzzle part works then, they really get into it.
I love the pictures and the visual natural of this puzzle. Adding the clipart is a little thing, but it adds a whimsical feel to the classroom and makes everything seem less serious.
Christmas-themed Whole Class Review Games
One of my favorite low-prep, high-engagement math activities is to play a knockout review game. These games are so fun, and students get a chance to practice their math skills.
If you’re not familiar with knockout review games, these games are played as a whole group. The game board and questions are projected for the whole class to see. Students answer each question, and they keep track of their own points as they play. If you want, they come with a scorecard, but students can use a whiteboard or their own piece of paper.
From the game board, students choose an image. That image will bring up the next question with a points value assigned. All students have time to answer the question (I like to work with dry-erase sleeves or white boards and have them show their answers). Then, the answer is revealed and students are ready for the next question.
We have 3 Christmas themed Knockout Review Games that review essential math concepts students just can’t get enough of:
- One-Step Equations Christmas Knockout Review Game
- Two-Step Equations Christmas Knockout Review Game
- Multi-Step Equations Christmas Knockout Review Game
These games are a great way to review on those days where schedules might be a little different and there’s a lot of excitement in the air.
Christmas Tree Exit Tickets
We complete a reflection exit ticket once or twice a week. Sometimes I like to have the students put their exit tickets on the door.
For December, our exit tickets are Christmas ornaments. You can have students put their exit tickets on the door as rectangles, or you can have them cut them out. You could even have a tree on your door or wall that students add their ornaments to. It’s a great way for students to display their work and decorate the classroom, all while giving you a bit more insight into their ideas about what they’re learning. This idea is so easy, and you probably already do exit tickets, so it’s just a little bit more effort to make this a memorable holiday experience.
Download your free set of ornament exit tickets here.
Math Challenges
I love these math challenges from Mash-up math. Students need more abstract practice with equations, and that’s what these do. This set of challenges has Christmas and winter themes and contains 12 challenges to choose from.
You could either have the students complete one challenge a day, or you could have challenges printed and hang them around the room as a gallery walk. This would work as something that could be ready for fast finishers, or for when you have extra time with the whole class. These challenges are fun and engaging. Your students will be asking for more!
Constructing a Giant Snowflake
We live in Arizona, so the only snowflakes we see around here are made of paper. In this blog post from Free to Discover you’ll find a detailed description of how to make these geometric masterpieces. Students will love making these and will want to take them home. I used this last year as a fast finisher project that students completed when they finished their work. They loved them!
Analyzing the 12 Days of Christmas
This 12 Days of Christmas activity from PNC bank is a fun, real-world resource with lots of math possibilities.
PNC bank has created an interactive website that shows the change in cost of all the presents in the 12 Days of Christmas through the years. It’s updated annually and shows changes over time. Something that’s especially awesome about this activity is that it comes with a lesson plan and multiple activities that you can do with the website. After looking at their charts, I can’t really believe how much the prices have increased in my lifetime.
What a fun resource to help students to see the concepts that we’re learning in a real world context. If you have a few days before Christmas break, this is perfect for some project-based learning. The lesson plans on this website are pretty complete and will take us 1 to 2 class periods.
Christmas Themed Word Problems
I found this list of Christmas word problems that reviews some basic skills like proportions, exponents, and equations. The problems themselves bring in the Christmas touch because they have candy canes or Christmas trees in them.
You could use this with the whole class as a modeling activity with the C.U.B.E.S problem-solving strategy. With this strategy the students solve word problems through this process:
- Circle the important numbers.
- Underline the question.
- Box in the operation words.
- Evaluate what you need to do.
- Solve and check your work.
The C.U.B.E.S. strategy help students tackle those troublesome word problems, and would work great with this collection of Christmas word problems. One great thing about this set of problems is that the problems vary in the concept that they are practicing. The students don’t go into each problem knowing that it’s a proportions problem, or an exponents problem. This kind of practice helps students be ready for solving novel problems. In addition, the novelty of the Christmas theme keeps the students engaged.
Real World Math Activities
Learning math happens everywhere, and that holds true for Christmas as well. The Yummy Math website has challenges that show math in the real world. These problems look a lot like 3-Act math problems and give your students the chance to do some hands-on math. These make great jumping off points for exploring math in the real world. There’s one that examines soda can displays, and another that compared gift wrapping strategies. These activities emphasize making predictions and have students practice a variety of math concepts. (Login is required for more detailed lesson supports & answer keys)
For example, one of the activities is related to a soda display that looks like Santa. Students answer a variety of questions about this display, including how many cans of soda it contains. Also, they work with the probability of choosing a can of Sprite from the display. This type of activity works perfectly as a way for students to engage in math talk.
Christmas school supplies as prizes
My kids love prizes. I give them out more to my math lab classes because I only have about 12 kids in there. We use a program called SumDog for fluency practice and once a week I give out a prize for the top three students. Also, I give prizes when we play bingo. Occasionally, we do prizes for student participation.
If you go to the dollar store, Wal-Mart, or Target, there are a lot of cute Christmas school supplies or toys you can get. Right now my students love slime and squishy things. When you work with Title I kids they seem to really appreciate the prizes. I love using Christmas school supplies as prizes. The kids need pencils and erasers anyways, and this way they feel like they’re earning them.
Try one thing
This holiday season, we hope that you have a chance to enjoy with your students. It can be simple to embrace the holiday season in math class. Don’t feel like you have to do a whole bunch of Christmas math activities. Just try one or two things. Students will appreciate and you’ll have a little bit more Christmas cheer in your class.
Remember that it can really be quite simple to add some holiday cheer. Christmas themed assignments or bringing some Christmas stuff into your class goes a long ways.
The two of us here at Math Idea Galaxy would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays this time of year. Thanks so much for reading! Until next time.
