It’s time to get your classroom into the winter holiday spirit! Check out our favorite, educational, winter holiday videos, lesson plans, and games below!
Videos
Kwanzaa (History.com)
Hanukkah (History.com)
Diwali – Festival of Lights (National Geographic via Youtube.com)
Christmas Traditions Worldwide (History.com)
History of Christmas (History.com)
History of Christmas Trees (History.com)
Santa Claus (History.com)
New Year’s (History.com)
Lesson Plans
Celebrating Winter Holidays in the Classroom (Scholastic.com)
Holidays are a topic occupying the thoughts of children — and teachers — during much of the year, but especially during November and December. This theme can provide a wonderful opportunity to introduce students to customs and cultures that may be unfamiliar to them and to help them recognize festivals as communal celebrations of culture.
Winter Holiday Lesson Ideas (BrainPop Educators)
Lesson ideas for using BrainPOP to teach about holidays, winter holiday activities for kids, and winter holidays background information for parents and teachers.
Celebrate! Holidays and Festivals Around the World (ePals.com)
How are special days celebrated throughout the world? Every culture has its own special
traditions and reasons for celebrating and, in this project, students will learn how holidays and
festivals are celebrated all over the globe. Students will explore celebrations, traditions and
symbols related to a holiday or festival from their home countries and then investigate those from other parts of the world. In a culminating activity, students will share their information and create symbolic representations of their researched holiday from across the globe. This project is designed so that it can be done as a single classroom project with students collaborating in pairs or small groups and using various sources such as books, the internet and the ePals student forums for research, or, as a collaborative email-based project.
December Holiday Lesson Plans and Activities – Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and More (educationworld.com)
December is a month full of special days. Education World offers resources to help educators teach about all those special days. The resources include holiday lesson plans, holiday art and gift projects, and additional holiday resources.
Educational Games
Christmas Lights Math (abcya.com)
It’s time to put up the Christmas lights! But wait! Before you can put up the Christmas lights, you must correctly answer as many math problems as you can in one minute. You can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication or division facts. The more math problems you solve correctly, the more lights you will be given to decorate your house!
A Blocky Christmas (abcya.com)
A Blocky Christmas is a challenging holiday puzzle for kids grades four and up. Players must use the keyboard arrows to move the puzzle pieces into place. There are sixteen levels of play!
Christmas Word Search (abcya.com)
Christmas Word Search is a fun holiday activity for children of all ages. Puzzles can be created two ways: a small grid with shorter words or a larger grid with longer words. This feature will allow younger children to enjoy the puzzles too! You can print or play online.
Sugar, Sugar Christmas (abcya.com)
The Christmas edition of Sugar, Sugar is a challenging logic puzzle with a physics twist and a holiday theme. Each level of the game is a puzzle that requires planning and strategy.
Factory Ball Christmas (abcya.com)
Factory Balls is a logic puzzle game that will challenge kids and adults. The object of Factory Balls is to create balls with designs that match the Christmas ball in each level.
Civiballs Christmas (abcya.com)
Civiballs Christmas is a challenging physics puzzle for kids of all ages! The object of the puzzle is to cut the chains and get the colored balls into vases of the same color. Trial and error will lead to solutions!
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