7 Christmas Activities For Kids

Looking for fun Christmas activities for kids? Enjoy the magic of the season and help your toddler or preschooler learn and grow this holiday season.

The holiday season is full of fun and magic. No matter what you believe in, or how you celebrate Christmas in your home, there are plenty of ways you can enjoy the spirit of the holiday with your child with fun Christmas activities.

Christmas activities allow for spontaneous and undirected playtime. Engaging with your child and introducing Christmas activities for kids are special ways to embrace the season, bond with your little one, and make life-long memories. 

At Kinedu, we offer support and resources to provide you with playtime activities for your child for every season and stage of their development. We’ve compiled a list of the best Christmas activities for kids that you can do with your toddler or preschooler this holiday season. 

For more fun and developmental activities, be sure to download the Kinedu App.  

Christmas Activities For Toddlers 

Celebrating the Christmas season with your toddler is a fun and exciting time. Between the ages of 12 months to 3 years, your child is learning so much about the world around them and is engaging with you in magical new ways.  

Christmas activities for toddlers can help you share in the excitement of the holiday while supporting their cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social-emotional development. 

Try these fun Christmas activities with your toddler this holiday season. 

Christmas Search

• • Recommended Age: 16 months and up
  • Development: Cognitive 
  • Goal: To reinforce problem-solving strategies.
  • Skills Practiced: Early knowledge and curiosity
  • Supplies Needed:
    • Assortment of Christmas items

How To:

Begin this fun Christmas activity by talking to your toddler about Christmas and showing them a variety of Christmas items, such as a Santa Claus, decorative plastic ornaments, a stocking, and a pine tree. Describe each object, mentioning its color, shape, and size. 

Now, tell them that they will pretend to be detectives and that you will hide the objects and then you both will have to find them. When searching for the items, use directional words like “ up” and “down” to give them clues!

Christmas Story

• • Recommended Age: 16 months and up
  • Development: Linguistic
  • Goal: To stimulate the acquisition of new words and the pronunciation of phonemes.
  • Skills Practiced: First words
  • Supplies Needed:
    • A Christmas storybook
    • Crayons

How To:

To complete this Christmas activity, choose a Christmas story to read with your toddler. Perhaps they already have a favorite! While you read the story, emphasize the words that contain the “M” phoneme. Invite them to say the phoneme, repeating it slowly and clearly. Watch their mouth. When we pronounce the phoneme ‘M’, our mouths are closed. 

Now, on a white sheet of paper draw an object or character in the story that contains the phoneme “M”. Continue repeating its name as you draw it.

My Christmas Tree

• • Recommended Age: 16 months and up
  • Development: Physical
  • Goal: To enhance fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
  • Skills Practiced: Developing hand coordination
  • Supplies Needed:
    • Green paint
    • Brown Paint
    • White cardboard
    • A star

How To:

Begin this activity by explaining to your toddler that you will make a Christmas tree. First, place the green paint in a container big enough for them to put their hand in it. Then, tell them to press their hand on the white cardboard. 

Tell your toddler where to place it, creating the shape of a pine tree for Christmas. Then, paint the trunk of the pine with your brown paint and paste the star on the top. You can also add decorations to the tree with other paint colors or objects. This activity will stimulate your child’s fine motor skills as well as their coordination and impulse control.

My Sphere

• • Recommended Age: 20 months and up
  • Development: Social-Emotional
  • Goal: To identify the family members and reinforce your child’s affective ties with you.
  • Skills Practiced: Developing self-awareness
  • Supplies Needed:
    • Colored paper
    • Photographs of family members
    • Non-toxic glue
    • Decorating materials
    • Markers
    • Scissors

How To: 

To complete this Christmas activity for toddlers, talk to your child about the holiday and how this is a time when the family unit is very important. Explain to them that together you will create ornaments for the Christmas tree. 

Cut spheres from the paper in different colors, one for each family member. Then take a picture of each member and ask your child to paste it onto every sphere. Together, decorate the spheres using different materials such as paint, markers, and glitter, or stickers. Then, ask your child the names of each family member and write them on the sphere. Paste a ribbon on the back of the sphere so that when it dries you can hang it together with your child on the Christmas tree.

For more Christmas activity ideas and to gain access to more than 1,800 activities created by Early Childhood Development Experts, download the Kinedu app today!

Christmas Activities For Preschoolers

 By the time your child is 3 years old, they are developing more advanced cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional skills. They are inquisitive and excited about learning new things and can appreciate and understand more about the magic of the holiday season!

Christmas activities for preschoolers can help spark their imagination, deepen their relationships with family members, and help them work on their linguistic skills, all while spending time and bonding with you. 

Here are some fun Christmas activities to introduce to your preschooler this Christmas! 

Words And Their Meaning

• • Recommended Age: 48 months and up
  • Development: Linguistic
  • Goal: Enriching your child’s vocabulary.
  • Skills Practiced: Semantics
  • Supplies Needed:
    • Christmas Objects Outline
    • Colored Pencils or crayons

How To:

For this fun Christmas activity, you will need the Christmas Objects Outline worksheet. You can download it here and print it out for your preschooler to use. Be sure to scroll through the pin to access each of the six object worksheets. 

Hand your child the worksheets as well as some crayons or colored pencils. Explain that you will name each of the objects, and they will have to color the objects in the order you name them. Start by naming one of them and observe if your little one can identify it correctly. 

Continue this dynamic until you go through all the objects, and pay attention to see if your child has a hard time identifying any of them, or if they ask anything about the objects. Motivate your child to ask about the objects or the words they don’t know and help out explaining or pointing out the corresponding object. 

You can also give short explanations about each object so your little one can learn about them. This activity will help you enrich your little one’s vocabulary.

Christmas Roles

• Recommended Age: 54 months and up
• Development: Social-Emotional
• Goal: Helping your child understand and describe the different roles played at Christmas.
• Skills Practiced: Developing empathy and cooperation
• Supplies Needed: 
  • Crayons
  • 3 paper sheets stapled together to form a booklet

How To:

For this Christmas activity for preschoolers, you will need to prepare some crayons and three paper sheets stapled together to make up a booklet. 

Talk to your little one about the different people or characters they can find during Christmas: Santa Claus, his elves, reindeers, etc. 

Talk about these different roles, and mention which role your child plays. Explain that they will draw some of these characters in the booklet, and illustrate or write what they do. Mention that they have to include their own role as a child as well. 

Ask your little one to talk about each drawing and write an explanation behind or next to each drawing. Once they finish, look at the booklet together and go over the different characters that make up Christmas.

Drawing Your Favorite Thing

• • Recommended Age: 54 Months and up
  • Development: Social-Emotional
  • Goal: Motivate your child to express certain opinions about a subject (for example, through words and drawings)
  • Skills Practiced: Self-awareness and Self-efficacy
  • Supplies Needed:
    • Crayons
    • 1 sheet of paper

How To:

Start this fun Christmas activity by setting out some blank paper sheets and crayons on a table. Sit down with your little one and explain that today you will draw their favorite thing about Christmas. 

Ask them about their favorite thing about Christmas, why they picked it, how does it look, smell or taste. Then, ask your child to draw their favorite thing about Christmas. If you notice they’re finding it hard to think of their favorite thing, you can remind them of some things related to this holiday.

Mention that they can use any colors they like. Throughout the activity, congratulate your little one for their ideas, creativity, and effort. This activity is meant to inspire your little one to express their own interests and opinions.

Anyone Can Enjoy Christmas Activities For Kids

There are so many ways to explore the excitement of the holiday season. Even if your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas in your home, you can incorporate other holiday elements into all of these fun Christmas activities for kids. 

No matter what, we want you to enjoy the season making memories with your little one and helping them grow and learn through play! 

For even more playtime fun, download Kinedu today to join interactive play sessions that include music, arts, guided play, and more!