Preschool Christmas Fun

These playful preschool Christmas activities are perfect for creating a sense of wonder in children while also teaching fundamental skills.

Preschool Christmas Ideas that are both fun and educational

A Preschool Christmas

There’s a delicate balance to be made between getting a preschooler geared up for Christmas and keeping him geared down at the same time! We chose to do a craft or activity everyday so we could talk about different aspects of Christmas and prepare his little heart for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday.

However, the activities were mixed in with “regular” school to keep the excitement factor under wraps. Why? I’ve been there and done that with two preschoolers in the past and too much excitement leads to crazy little people who can’t control themselves! lol

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Count Down Chain

A construction paper count down chain teaches numbers, counting, colors, patterning, cutting and fine motor skills. It’s super-easy, too. Cut long strips from red and green construction paper. Write the numbers 1-25 on the strips to represent the days of December leading up to Christmas. Each day, tear off the appropriately dated strip. Your little one will love this visual reminder that Christmas is coming!

Play Dough and Jewels

Christmas-scented playdough, cookie cutters and some craft jewels are fun for decorating PK Christmas trees. This activity teaches colors, shapes, patterning and even promotes fine motor skills.

Stringing Jingle Bells

Jingle bells can easily be strung onto pipe cleaners by little hands for a fun instrument. This is a great activity to promote music and fine motor skills.

Foam Sticker Graphing

Even preschoolers aren’t too young to learn about graphing when you help them create a concrete pictograph from holiday-themed foam stickers. I started the graph by placing one of each sticker on the bottom row so he would know where to put the following stickers. One at a time, I gave him the stickers and asked him to place them one on top of the other that matched. After building the graph, we talked about things like “how many” and “how high.” Besides counting and graphing, this activity can build the skills of colors, shapes, matching and fine motor.

Glittery Pine Cones

A December nature walk helped us find several pine cones. As a fun craft, we rolled the cones in a plate of glue, then rolled them in a plate of glitter. After they were dry, we tied string around the stems to make little ornaments for the tree. This activity promotes art, nature, science, and fine motor skills.

Measuring Christmas Ribbon

Measurement is fun with little ones when it’s very concrete. For this activity, allow you preschooler to cut several lengths of Christmas ribbon. Use linking cubes or some other manipulative you have around the house (even cereal) to measure the various lengths. You could even tape them on a poster board from shortest to longest. Besides measurement, this activity practices cutting, sorting and fine motor skills.

Christmas Patterns

Linking cubes are great for preschoolers because they are easy to put together and they don’t come apart easily. Use linking cubes in Christmas colors to create simple patterns. Besides patterning, you are building fine motor skills and logical thinking.

Bow Relay

Using Christmas bows and a pair of tongs, challenge your PK to use the tongs to transport the bows from one place in the room to another. You could even call out particular colors to grab each time. This activity promotes large and small motor skills, as well as color recognition.

Roll and Decorate

Cut a simple Christmas tree shape from construction paper. Your child rolls a die and places the correct number of ornaments (pom pom craft balls) on the tree. Besides counting and small motor skills, your older preschooler may be able to practice some addition or subtraction.

Decorating with Droppers

Using the same Christmas tree cut-out from the dice game above, I placed a sheet of waxed paper over the top. Using an eye dropper and water colored with food coloring, Eli decorated the tree with water ball ornaments. Besides fine motor skills, this activity is a great science introduction to how water molecules stick together.

Torn Paper Wreath

Mom gets to cut the circle out from the middle of a paper plate while the preschooler tears green paper into approximately 1-inch bits. All the bits are then glued onto the paper plate to make a wreath to hang. This activity promotes art and fine motor skills.

Gift Cards

My little guy has a December birthday, so these simple cards served as his birthday party thank yous. You could use them as Christmas cards or ornaments. Cut squares and paper strips from colorful paper. (Older preschoolers might be able to do the cutting.) Glue the strips to the squares to look like ribbon. Add some colorful buttons for decoration and you’re done! This activity reinforces art, cutting and fine motor skills.

Christmas Card Art

We have lots of old Christmas cards stashed away for fun crafts. This is a super-easy activity for preschoolers to use up some of those cards. After sorting through the cards to find their favorites, they cut out special parts and glue them on construction paper to create their own Christmas art. Besides art and fine motor skills, the science/math skill of sorting is practiced.

Hole Punch Ornaments

I had some pre-cut stars in the art box that made this craft very easy. Eli used a hole punch to make designs in the stars, then cut and strung ribbon through one of the holes on each star to make little ornaments. Fine motor skills, art and shapes are reinforced in this activity.

Remember My Size Reindeer

This activity required more help from me, but is now a keepsake for me to remember the size of my precious boy’s hands and feet this year. I traced his foot and hands on construction paper, then cut them out and glued the hands to the top of the shoe print to look like antlers. Eli added googly eyes and a pom pom nose, while I added the smile.

Simple Dramas

Whether at home or church, little people get a lot of understanding from acting out the story of Jesus’ birth. This is a picture of my preschooler and 9yo taking part in a Christmas drama at church.