The month of December can be magical in 1st grade! It can also be chaotic, messy, and exhausting! Whether you’re enjoying every minute or checking off the days until break, use these classroom Christmas ideas to plan the best week before Winter break in 1st grade!
1. Plan your days with Christmas Daily Slides
During the week or weeks before Winter Break, I love using Christmas Daily Slides to plan out our day in 1st grade! They’re are perfect for adding a little extra cheer to classroom routines!
I love using the morning slides to type fun morning messages to students while also giving visual reminders of procedures to complete each morning!
I also utilize Choice Boards during the last week of school! I love setting students up with easy independent activities while I work with students (either on academic work OR projects like finishing up the ornaments we make for families!) ❤️
You can find these editable Christmas Daily Slides here!
2. Have tons of No-Prep Activities copied and ready to go!
One thing I’ve learned over the years teaching 1st grade is that having “just in case” activities ready to go can be a LIFE SAVER! I have a drawer where I have sets of copies of independent activities that I can pull out whenever I have an extra 15 minutes to fill or if I need students working quietly so I can quickly get something checked off my to-do list!
Here are my FAVORITE independent activities to pull from:
❤️ Christmas 1st Grade Math Worksheets – these are perfect for keeping students engaged and learning until Christmas break! Students can complete them independently and love coloring them after! Each page also has a Christmas joke that students LOVE! Find them here!
❤️ Winter Color by Code – these differentiated color by number addition and subtraction pages are perfect for practicing fact fluency! Each pictures has 3 levels of difficulty so you can easily differentiate for your students!
❤️ Christmas Writing No Prep Craft Freebies – I LOVE having a few of these easy no-prep crafts ready to go each month! They are perfect for an independent activity or a Fun Friday craft! You could even put some extras in a writing center! Find them here!
3. Have a North Pole Day
On the last FULL day of school before Winter Break, we have a classroom Christmas theme day in 1st grade! It keeps students engaged AND learning all day long! 💚❤️🎄
Students work in teams to complete all the station challenges. They have a sticker chart and get to add a sticker for each activity they visit. The best part is that our centers last almost all day!
Read more about our North Pole Theme Day here!
4. Plan the EASIEST Classroom Christmas Party ever!
Our last day before break is always an early release day. I keep our schedule super simple on that day! In the morning, I have Christmas music playing and a Christmas fireplace from Youtube going on our Smart Board.
Usually when students come in, I have many who bring me gifts (I know that this is such a blessing and this is not the same at all schools) I like to open them and write a thank you note right away! While I do this, I have students working on one of my low-prep Christmas activities from #2 above!
After that, students open a small gift from me (usually a $1 or $2 scholastic book) and I let them partner read while I finish up thank you notes or getting things organized!
After that we make this our easy Christmas tree bags and wrap the ornaments that students made earlier in the week for their families. You can read more about that here!
Finally after lunch we have our class party! After trial and error, I found that the absolute easiest way to plan a class part is to have Party Stations! I usually have 3 at all of my class parties: Craft, Game, and Snack.
I’m lucky to be at a school with a lot of parent involvement, so I ask my room parents to put a parent in charge of each of the 3 stations. They use a sign up genius to get all supplies needed and I don’t have to provide anything which is wonderful!
I put students in groups and go over stations ahead of time. When parents arrive, students head to the first station, and I walk around and supervise!
Our stations last about 15 minutes so that our total party time is between 45-60 min with clean up!
These editable Class Party rotation slides and clipart icons are included in my Christmas Daily Slides! You can find them here!
5. Add some holiday spirit (In SIMPLE Ways!) Classroom Christmas Ideas
Throughout the week, I like keeping some of our daily routines the same, but sometimes you also just have to embrace the chaos! I like adding simple things to make our days a little more magical! Here are a few of the simple classroom Christmas ideas to add some Christmas magic!
❤️ Youtube Fireplace + Christmas music on the smart board – I put this on whenever students are working independently or reading! It adds so much coziness and the background music keeps them calm!
I also like finding kids’ Christmas music playlists on Spotify for more upbeat music!
💚 Grinch Visitor – One day during the last week of school, the Grinch visits our classroom! He uses green post-its to make a mess in our classroom and writes on the kids’ tables with green dry erase markers! I tell the kids in the morning that I brought candy canes for them as a treat after lunch and show them red candy canes. After we get back from lunch, we see that the Grinch has turned them green!! 💚 The kids get the biggest kick out of this!
I hope this post gives you some classroom Christmas ideas for planning the best week before Winter break in your 1st grade classroom! Happy Holidays! 🙂 Kelsey
Need More Classroom Christmas Ideas and Activities? Check out these posts!
North Pole Day: Classroom Christmas Ideas and Activities
Easy Christmas Tree Gift Wrapping Craft
