During the month of December, I'm always looking for ways to keep my students engaged in learning activities - as any teacher knows, the closer you get to Christmas, the bigger the struggle that is! I wanted to find a way for my students to practice skills, but not with your typical worksheet, so I created three different holiday crafts that you can use with your students to practice any skill or concept!
In this resource, all of the template pieces are included to make a reindeer, Christmas tree, or gingerbread house. On the blank templates, you can have students practice any skill you want including sight words, math facts, word families, spelling words, letters, fact families, grammar skills, and MUCH more!
Here are some of the ways I used the Monthly Skills Crafts in my classroom:
I wanted to give my students a chance to practice reading and writing their sight words they'd learned for the first part of the year, so I put this activity in a center and they wrote their sight words on the Christmas lights and put them on the reindeer antlers. After they created them, I hung them up in my classroom and they made the cutest decor to boot!
This student decided to make hers like Rudolph!
In math, my students were working on decomposing numbers so I decided to have them create a Christmas tree to practice their math facts for making ten.
There are SO many different ways you could use this craft! You could also have students practice addition and subtraction strategies, place value forms, number writing, skip counting, and more! One way I may use it this year is to have them write adjectives to describe their tree after they decorate it.
For the last craft, a gingerbread theme is always one that students enjoy. This template allows students to decorate a gingerbread house the way they want it and then use the candies to practice different skills! This example has students practicing writing words in the "short I" word family. There are so many great options for this template and they always turn out so cute and creative!
My favorite thing about this resource is that the activities are SO versatile, students love creating them, and they make fantastic holiday decor to hang in your classroom as well.
If you'd like to add this resource to your classroom this year, click on the picture below to find out more!
