Enjoying a good Christmas themed or winter themed book is always so much fun! It’s something about the limited time that we have in December to choose all of our activities for reading and math. Some of my favorite activities for December include books and digital fun! Keep reading to see what 4 activities I think you’ll love!
How to Catch an Elf Read Aloud
My first pick is a book called How to Catch an Elf. If you’ve ever read any of the How to Catch series of books, you will know just how this book goes. It’s a wonderful book to either introduce problem and solution or review it. It’s also a lot of fun to just pretend and imagine how we would actually try to catch an elf!
If your students are really into the holidays and the spirit of imagination, they will love this book. Something I always do, is to pretend an elf has snuck into our room. It could be by leaving behind a treat, a note, a goodie for students that have been behaving or just a note about a movie to watch. Your kids will start searching for the elf to return.
You can find everything that I use including vocabulary pictures, anchor chart pieces, a craft and more here. I also usually let my students write their Christmas list as well. It’s the perfect way to get what they want to their parents. I just snap a picture and add it to Seesaw.
Click Clack Ho Ho Ho!
I am a HUGE Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin fan! Over 10 years ago when I was in college, I fell in love with their writing and illustrating. Ever since, I’ve been hooked on Farmer Brown and the animals’ shenanigans. Click Clack Ho Ho Ho! is another instant hit! The farm animals are up to something again except this time it involves Christmas. It’s a great book to teach with when teaching sequence/order of events.
It’s also another choice for problem/solution. Your students will easily be able to see what the problem is in the story, but they will need to come up with a solution for it. We also make a craft to go along with the story towards the end of the week, but the best part is definitely listening to my students recall information from the book. Want a Santa craft to go with it? You can find one here.
Reindeer
In the past, I usually talked about reindeer during my Arctic Animals unit in January. However, there are so many amazing animals that December is a perfect time to still get in one nonfiction book with all of the holiday themes floating around. One book that is perfect for kindergarten is A Day in the Life: Polar Animals – Reindeer.
We go over the life cycle of reindeer, where they live, what they eat, reindeer babies and tons of new and fun facts about reindeer. We also get in all of those nonfiction book text features that we need. The best part about this, kids LOVE animals. They also love learning weird facts about animals.
Turkey Claus
My last read aloud is Turkey Claus. It’s SUPER cute and so easy to do during those weeks where November and December is split in the week. It’s the perfect way to leave Thanksgiving behind, but bring in Christmas and December all at the same time.
Turkey Claus is another great book for teaching problem/solution and thinking about alternate endings to books. We also make a REALLY cute craft that mimics what the turkey did in the book. The first time I read it, I had no idea what was going to happen and it’s such a cute little book. Your kids should love it as much as mine did.
You can check out ALL of these printables, crafts and lesson plans to these books here.
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