46 Christmas Activities for Preschool

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Looking for some great Christmas activities for preschool? You’ve come to the right place. I’ve put together two weeks of fun Christmas activities for preschool kids to do this winter.

Keep reading to discover creative ways to build math skills, literacy, STEM learning projects, handwriting practice, fine motor skills, and more for your preschool classroom. These preschool Christmas activities are perfect for early learning fun this holiday season at home and in the classroom.

All these ideas are combined together to create two weeks of fun-filled Christmas lesson plans and holiday activities for preschoolers. Plus, extra preschool Christmas activities to do at home with your kids this December.

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Holiday and Christmas Crafts for Preschoolers

I love teaching with winter holiday crafts in my preschool classroom. Crafts are a fun way to practice important early skills like cutting, pasting, and prewriting.

Plus, Christmas crafts encourage kids to express themselves and practice creative thinking. 

I can’t wait to share with you some of my favorite crafty Christmas activities for preschoolers! Keep reading to learn how to make your own advent calendar, practice letter recognition with snow globes, and learn the letters in your name with a reindeer.

Santa Advent Calendar

This advent calendar is a great way to help your preschoolers practice fine motor skills and counting while having fun together. Kids can use this calendar to count down to Christmas using Santa’s beard.

It’s super cute and lots of fun!

Get the Santa’s advent calendar printable, white cotton balls, and glue to get started. For even more fun, sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town together during circle time.

Pete the Cat Christmas Craft

You can’t teach in December without reading Pete the Cat’s 12 Groovy Days of Christmas by James Dean.

These Pete the Cat Christmas activities are an adorable way to count down the days until Christmas while incorporating a sequencing activity from the story!

Ruduloph the Reindeer craft

I love combining art and literacy with preschoolers too. This cute reindeer craft is sure to spark their imagination and help them master the letters of their name too!

It’s the perfect name learning activity to do before you watch Rudolph with your preschoolers this year.

Plus, this Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer name craft would look amazing on a Christmas bulletin board or sent home as a Christmas present for preschool parents. This is such a fun Christmas name craft for kids!

Grinch Day Ideas

Do you celebrate Grinch Day at school? If so, you will definitely want to grab this Grinch craft for kids.

This is a fun Grinch Day idea or Christmas activity to use as you count down the days until Christmas. This Grinch craft for kids comes with numbered ornaments as well as blank ornaments if you’d rather not use it as a DIY advent calendar.

Snow Globe Name Craft for Winter

This Christmas activity for preschool is a fun way to practice letter identification with your kids while helping them learn to spell their names. Plus, it makes a really cute craft!

Use these free snow globe craft printables to create personalized snow globes with your preschoolers for the holiday season.

Christmas Science Experiments with Candy Canes

Do you remember my Halloween science experiment with Candy Corn? Of course you do. It was jam packed with loads of learning fun for the Fall.

Well, this Candy Cane science experiment is equally as fun and is a great way to explore science this Winter.

This Christmas science experiment for kids is low prep and will leave your students hanging on the edge of their seats as they observe what happens to candy canes in different liquids.

As always, there are 3 variations of worksheets that come with this activity to help you differentiate instruction based on your students needs.

Be sure to also try out my hot chocolate science experiments and gingerbread man science experiments for kids too.

Sensory Bin Christmas Activities for Preschool

Sensory bins are really exciting for preschoolers. They’re a great hands-on learning tool for young kids because they give preschool learners an opportunity to explore through multisensory play.

Kids can use touch, sight, sounds, and smell to learn all kinds of cool things with these sensory bin Christmas activities for preschool.

Jingle Bell Christmas Sensory Bin

Can I make a request, while your preschoolers are exploring this winter sensory bin, sing or listen to Jingle Bells or Jingle Bell Rock. It’s the perfect way to add a little extra Christmas music to your preschool days.

With this Christmas activity for preschool, your kids will play and learn with fake snow, jingle bells, magnets, and holiday cookie cutters. They can explore how magnets work in a creative hands-on way too!

Jell-O Alphabet Search Sensory Bin

This Christmas sensory bin will require a bit of prep. You’ll need Jell-O, holiday cake pans, my Alphabet Search printable worksheet, and plastic alphabet letters. Make the Jell-O according to directions, then add plastic letters before the Jell-O sets. 

Finally, once Jell-O has set, give your preschooler the Christmas preschool worksheet and instruct them to find the letters in the gelatin. It might be messy, but it will be tons of fun!

Your preschoolers will definitely remember the letters they discover with this sensory bin Christmas activity.

Christmas Activities for Preschoolers

I’ve created not one but TWO amazing weeks with 30 of the best Christmas activities for preschoolers. Be sure you grab these engaging, hands on Christmas activities and Christmas printables by clicking on the pictures above to keep your kids learning in a fun way this holiday season.

Keep scrolling to see these activities in action. For more holiday inspiration, check out my Instagram.

Fine Motor Skill Building Preschool Christmas Activities

Practicing fine motor skills is an important part of a well-rounded preschool education. Whether you’re a preschool teacher or a homeschooler, you’ll definitely benefit from engaging in fine motor skill-building activities with your preschoolers this year. 

Fine motor skills help preschoolers develop the finger strength they’ll need to properly grip a pencil and make the strokes necessary to form letters and numbers. Fine motor skills are also essential for basic tasks like buttoning, zipping, and tying shoes.

Check out some of my favorite ways to practice fine motor skills with preschoolers this Christmas:

Christmas Playdough Mats

My preschoolers love playdough mats! You can grab my Christmas dough mats to help your preschoolers practice all kinds of fun early learning skills this December.

Use these Christmas play dough mats to encourage your preschoolers to expand their vocabulary while building fine motor skills as they manipulate the dough.

Geoboard Christmas Activities

Geoboards are great for helping preschoolers build fine motor skills, identify shapes, and develop spatial awareness. You can use these Christmas geoboards to build fun holiday shapes like a reindeer and Santa’s hat.

It’s a fun activity your preschoolers can do at home or in the classroom this December.

This set comes with 10 easy geoboard designs (shown above) and 10 more difficult designs. Grab all 20 Geoboard designs.

Christmas Tangram Mats

These Tangram mats are a great way to build fine motor skills while creating reindeer, gifts, and snowflakes from shapes. Plus, these printable pattern block mats will help you explore new vocabulary, pre-writing, and shape identification with your preschoolers this December.

Christmas Books for kids

The best way to help your preschoolers build important early literacy skills is by reading to them. Sharing Christmas stories is one of my favorite Christmas activities for preschoolers! Check out some of my favorite holiday books:

In addition to fun book suggestions, I’ve got tons of exciting ways to practice early literacy skills with your preschoolers at home and in the classroom this Christmas. Check out some of my favorite Christmas literacy activities for preschoolers:

Fun Christmas Literacy Activities for Preschooler

Santa Tracker Letter Match

Do your kids addictively watch the Santa tracker on Christmas Eve wondering where Santa is and when he will be at your house? Mine sure do. So with them in mind, I created this adorable alphabet letter match activity.

With this adorable preschool Christmas activity, your class can track down Santa while learning to identify the letters of the alphabet. Kids will practice matching lowercase letters to uppercase letters as they track Santa’s route across the land this Christmas.

Reindeer Compound Words

Mastering compound words can be challenging for preschoolers. With this Christmas preschool activity, your preschoolers will use reindeer to build and take apart compound words.

It’s a fun way to practice forming these tricky words at home and in the classroom this December.

Santa Syllables

Practicing syllables is a lot of fun for preschoolers! Plus, learning to identify them will help your preschoolers master phonics and prepare them for reading.

You can use these cute Christmas printables to help your preschoolers practice syllables with Santa this December.

For even more hands-on syllable learning fun, try clapping out the syllables in different Christmas vocabulary words during circle time with your preschoolers. It’s an engaging activity they’ll all love!

Rhyming Christmas Trees Activity

Rhyming activities are a fun way for preschoolers to explore phonics and wordplay. Rhyming helps kids learn about letter sounds and word families.

In this fun Christmas activity for preschool, your kids will get to decorate Christmas trees while building rhyming skills this December.

Christmas Easy Reader Books

I don’t know about you, but my three year old has been struggling with prepositions. Words like under, over, by, near, far, between can be a struggle for little ones to grasp so this preposition book is definitely needed!

This preposition activity for preschoolers is a fun way to practice beginning reading skills like reading left to right and introducing stacked lines. It’s also a great opportunity to talk about the importance of preposition in a hands on way.

This comes with a black and white book and several Christmas trees to decorate and glue in the right places on the pages. Just read each sentence and place the tree where it goes!

Christmas Math Activities for Preschool

Are you looking for engaging hands-on math learning activities for your preschoolers this December? You’re going to love these Christmas math activities for preschool!

They’re perfect for kids to practice important early math concepts at home and in the classroom.

Christmas Tree Counting Activity

This hands-on activity is one you can make with your preschoolers for free this December. You’ll need color coding dots, star stickers, green construction paper (cut to form triangles), and clothespins.

Write a number on each clothespin from 1-10. 

Then, have kids clip the clothespin to the green triangle “tree.” The clothespin will serve as your Christmas tree’s trunk.

Finally, have fun decorating your tree with the correct number of color dot stickers. It’s a great way to practice counting and one-to-one correspondence with your preschoolers this Christmas. 

Snowball Fight Counting Fun

Wanna have a snowball fight with your preschoolers this December? These cute printables and some cotton balls will make it easy to have fun and practice counting indoors this year.

Your preschoolers will love completing the scenes in these Christmas snowball fight printables by adding the right number of cotton “snowballs” to the page.

Christmas Tree Number Hunt

In addition to building early counting skills and one-to-one correspondence this December, you can use this Christmas tree number hunt activity to help your preschoolers practice number identification.

This hands-on activity will get your kids up and moving around the room as they hunt for hidden holiday numbers. Hide the Christmas tree cards at set your preschoolers loose.

As they find each card, they will count the ornaments and color the corresponding number on their Christmas tree hunt worksheet. 

Deck the Christmas Tree Activity

This Christmas math activity works on learning numbers to 20 and is one of the best math activities for preschoolers.

Grab small manipulative or even snacks (m&ms work great with this) and set your kiddos free. They’ll choose a numbered card and add that many “ornaments” on the Christmas tree.

Sleigh Shape Printable Activity

Another important early math skill for preschoolers to master is shape identification. Your preschoolers can practice shape sorting and shape identification as they help Santa load his sleigh with this sleigh shape printable activity page.

Real objects like clocks, pizzas, and buttons are hidden in the presents your preschoolers will load in the sleigh. Encourage them to identify the shapes and sort them as they go. They’ll love helping Santa as they master shape sorting this Christmas!

Christmas Light Math Worksheet

This holiday math worksheet displays strings of numbered Christmas lights for your preschoolers to practice their counting skills. But wait! There are numbers missing in each light strand. 

Your kids can practice problem-solving skills, skip counting, ordering numbers, and critical thinking as they find the missing numbers in each row. It’s a fun way to practice early math skills this holiday season.

I’ve included several options for success so your beginning mathematician can feel success by tracing the numbers and your advanced mathematician can be an expert with filling in the blanks.

You can even turn this math activity for preschoolers into a fine motor activity by cutting these Christmas light cards apart and hanging them in order on string with clothes pins.

Easy Christmas Crafts for Preschoolers

Snowman craft

Preschoolers love painting! With this fun painting activity, you can explore the magic of snow while creating your very own snowmen using recycled toilet paper rolls, pompoms, paint, and construction paper. For even more fun, listen to Frosty the Snowman as you paint.

1. Dip the rim of the toilet paper roll in white paint and press it down on the construction paper to create the snowman’s body.
2. After that, cut out a hat and scarf and glue it on the snowman.
3. Then, draw on the snowman’s buttons, arms, and face.
4. Finally, glue pom poms around the snowman to create a winter scene.

This is the perfect snowman toilet paper roll craft to make with preschoolers!

Christmas Countdown Calendar

I love how children get so giddy as they countdown to Christmas. As each day passes the sparkle in their eyes gets a little bit bigger and bigger.

This year I decided to make two Christmas countdown calendars, or advent calendars for kids. I know you will love using these creative ways to countdown the 25 days until Christmas.

You’ll need to gather materials if you’re going to make these cute paper plate crafts. Luckily, you most likely have most of these hanging around your house.

You will need construction paper, 3 plates, 2 brads, brown paint, scissors, glue, and my FREE Christmas countdown calendar template.

After you gather the materials, you’ll want to cut out the kids advent calendar templates. This activity comes with a snowman and reindeer paper plate craft template to make your Christmas countdown a breeze.

After that, you will need to paint 2 of the paper plates brown. Then, cut one of the paper plates into thirds to create the reindeers face.

When you’re done, glue the templates onto the plates and attach the pointers (snowman nose and Rudolph tail) using brads. Finally, write the numbers 1-25 around the rims of the paper plates so you’re ready to count down the days until Christmas with your preschooler.

Grab the free kids advent calendar templates here and craft your own Christmas countdown calendar today.

STEM Preschool Christmas Activities and Projects

STEM activities focus on helping kids build science, math, technology, and engineering skills through fun projects and play-based activities. You’re going to love these exciting STEM preschool Christmas activities and projects:

Snowman STEM Christmas Activity

Challenge your preschoolers to build their own indoor snowmen in this STEM Christmas activity for preschoolers. You’ll need marshmallows in many sizes and toothpicks.

Encourage preschoolers to plan and build their very own snowman using marshmallows and toothpicks. Talk about what works and what doesn’t as they get creative along the way.

Cup Tower Christmas Tree STEM

You’ll need lots of green solo cups for this Christmas activity for preschool learners. Encourage your preschoolers to build the biggest Christmas tree they can with solo cups.

Don’t forget to decorate your Christmas cup tree (colorful pompoms and stickers are perfect for decorations)!

Outdoor Fun for Preschoolers This Christmas

Outdoor play is truly essential for preschoolers. This Christmas, there are lots of ways you can get your preschoolers outside while still learning and building important skills.

Check out some of my favorite outdoor fun Christmas activities for preschoolers that focus on gross motor skill building and healthy physical activity:

Decorate a Tree

Decorating a tree is a lot of fun! This year, spend time decorating outdoor trees or bushes with your preschoolers.

You can use homemade ornaments to save money and add to the excitement. Or bring the fun inside with this felt Christmas tree. It’s a favorite every year in the classroom and at home.

Christmas Carol walk

Go caroling with your preschoolers this December for a really cool way to talk about Christmas traditions, learn cute holiday songs, and encourage healthy physical activity with your kids. You can take a Christmas carol walk around your neighborhood or through the halls at your school this year.

Mitten Matching Game

Get your preschoolers up and moving with this exciting matching game that will have your preschoolers talking with one another, moving around the room, and practicing their matching skills. You’ll need cotton mitten sets (enough for each child in your classroom to have one mitten). 

Give each child one mitten and have them search around the room to find a child with the mitten that matches theirs. Homeschooling with one or two kids this Christmas?

You can place mittens around the room and have your kids hunt for them, matching the pairs as they go for a fun variation on this Christmas circle time for preschoolers.

Free Christmas Printables

Building Santas beard Number Sense

This free Christmas activity for preschoolers is a great way to teach counting and number sense. Here your students will build Santa’s beard with this hands on math activity.

Gather a small white manipulative such as cotton balls, playdoh, or pom poms and my free Santa templates and stick this in a preschool math center today.

Christmas Alphabet Activity

This Christmas alphabet activity is the perfect way for your preschoolers to learn letters this Christmas. Stick this fun alphabet activity in a literacy center and have your students match the letters in many ways.

I always have my little ones identify the letter name and sound, and then match on the letter mat with a small manipulative. You could use mini erasers, pom poms, magnetic letters, or even do a fun PlayDoh smash.

Counting Gifts

If you’re looking for a quick way to practice counting and number recognition this holiday season you won’t want to miss the fun activities I have here at The Primary Parade.

This counting gifts math activity is great for beginning mathematicians to practice one-to-one correspondence in a fun and festive theme.

Simply grab the template and some mini presents and your preschoolers will be counting in no time!

Snowman Shapes

Teaching toddlers and preschoolers shapes is an essential skill in school. Luckily, shapes are everywhere in the real world which makes it easy and fun to teach.

With this winter hands on activity, your students will practice matching the real world shapes to the correct snowman. Grab the free snowman printable today!

Christmas number mats

These Christmas fine motor number mats are perfect for preschoolers to practice allllllll the things this winter! I’m talking numbers, ten frames, handwriting, AND fine motor skills all jammed into this one Christmas activity. Do yourself a favor and grab these free Christmas number mats here.

Want more holiday crafts and Christmas activities for kids? Check out my other Christmas activities for kids post.

In Conclusion

I can’t wait to read all about all the fun you’re having with your preschoolers at home and in the classroom this Christmas! Don’t forget to share your favorite activities from this big Christmas set in the comment section.