Christmas Math Center Activities 2014

I love Christmas.  I love it even more now that I have kids of my own.  I love seeing their faces light up on Christmas morning.  But one of my favorite things I get to do now is going into my children’s classrooms the last day before their Christmas break to do some Christmas Math Center Activities.  Last year was the first year I got to do this because my oldest child was in Kindergarten.  You can read about what Christmas math activities we did last year HERE and HERE.  This year I have a child in 1st and Kindergarten, but I am only doing math activities in my Kindergartener’s room.  Here are the activities I’m excited about doing with them this year:

Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

This Christmas math activity is awesome because #1, It’s Olaf!! and #2, building things helps with spatial reasoning which is a big predictor of mathematical success.  FYI – we ended up making 46 of these baggies because once my 1st grader and preschooler saw them they also wanted to make them for their classmates.  So each of my children got lots of practice counting out the items in order to place the correct amount in each bag (thanks to Grandma for helping the kids with that after school). The kit includes 3 regular sized marshmallows, 2 mini marshmallows, 3 mini chocolate chips, 2 candy eyes, 2 pretzel sticks, and 1 candy corn.  You can get the label that I stapled onto each bag for free HERE.  I included a place for my kids to practice writing their names and for my 3 year-old I wrote his name using dotted lines so that he could trace the letters.

Matching Snowmen

I got the idea for this Christmas math center activity from this Pinterest Pin, which doesn’t actually take you to a post about the activity, so I made my own snowmen but with a little different twist.  I made it so that students have to match all the pieces for each snowman (the numeral, dot pattern, and ten frame) and place the snowmen in order (1-10).  You can get these fabulous snowmen for FREE on my TpT store.

Racing Reindeer

This Christmas math center activity was also inspired by a Pinterest Pin, this pin does work, however I changed the activity slightly.  Young children have a hard time with number lines, so we will be using a Number Path for the reindeer to race up.  Each child takes turns rolling the die and moving their reindeer that many spaces.  The first reindeer to reach 20 wins.  Last week I did a similar activity with 1st graders but I just had them mark off the numbers as they rolled, but using the reindeer will be so much more fun.  You can download your own 1-20 Number Path for free.  That document also explains why I prefer the number path instead of a number line for early learners.

Decorate the Tree

This Pinterest Pin shows kids decorating a giant ‘tape tree’ to help them with recognizing upper & lowercase letters.  I don’t have a picture yet because I will be making this in the classroom tomorrow, so I am using the picture from the Pinterest Pin that inspired me from the blog, Hands On As We Grow.

In the one I will be making for my daughter’s Christmas Math Centers, it will have the numerals for 1-20 written along the tape (20 starting at the top of the tree and 1 at the bottom so physically they see 7 is above, aka larger than, 5).  I printed these FREE 1-20 Ten Frame Ornaments on bright colored cardstock.  The ten frame representations will be mixed up and each child will take turns grabbing an ornament and finding the matching numeral on the tree.

Snowmen Subitizing Memory

I love doing subitizing activities, but kids can get bored with them.  So I created subitizing cards with different themes.  For this Christmas Math Center activity I used the Snowman Subitizing cards (one each for the numbers 1-10).  You need a total of 20 cards; 10 subitizing pictures of snowmen and 10 numeral cards.  The subitizing cards do not have cards with numbers, so I created matching numeral cards in order to play this version of Memory.   Lay them face down in a 4×5 array.  Children take turns flipping over two cards.  In order to keep the two cards, a player must find a numeral card that matches the amount of snowmen.

I know these last few days before the break can be hectic and kids can be wild, but one way to help make those days bearable is to do things that get the kids up, moving, and playing.  I hope you enjoy these activities as much as I did and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas.  Because Christmas is all about giving, I am GIVING away one set of the Snowman Subitizing Cards.  So, make sure you enter the raffle below.

Merry Christmas!!!!

–Christina
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