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We know how wild the short month of December can be in kindergarten! With holidays looming, our young students are often thinking more about their letters to Santa than the letters of the alphabet. One of my favorite ways to keep students engaged in learning during the last few weeks before winter break is to use thematic units. In this post, I’m going to share my favorite December themes for kindergarten!
Thematic units are a great way to acknowledge the excitement of the season without having to put learning on the back burner. The engaging activities are also the perfect way to help students sharpen up their skills before they leave for the long break.
A Polar Express theme is a great way to get students excited about the upcoming holiday. There are several educational activities you can center around the theme of “The Polar Express” by Chris Van Allsburg.
After reading the story together as a class, your students can practice sequencing as they retell the events from the story.
Students can review the story events with this sequencing lift-the-flap activity.
This foldable train craft is another great way to practice sequencing. Your students will be excited to retell the story using their own Polar Express trains!
You can also add some Polar Express fun to your math practice!
Students can complete this addition mini reader by adding marshmallows to mugs in different combinations.
This Polar Express addition activity is another hands-on way for students to identify different equations that add up to a particular sum.
You can also practice math skills like graphing with a hot chocolate taste test! Students can then cast their vote regarding whether or not they like marshmallows in their hot chocolate.
After recording the votes on an anchor chart, students can complete their own worksheets where they graph, tally, and interpret the data.
At the end of your Polar Express unit, it’s always so fun to watch the movie together as a class!
You can hand out tickets and arrange for a package from Santa to be delivered at the end of the movie.
A gingerbread theme is another great option for December! There are many ways that you can add some gingerbread fun to your daily learning routine.
With so many different versions of the gingerbread man story, you can spend some time helping your students compare and contrast two different versions.
They can arrange different story elements and characters on a Venn diagram to help them with the story comparison.
Your students will also enjoy fun gingerbread-inspired writing activities, like this creative writing activity. After using a graphic organizer to map out their ideas, students can create their own book and gingerbread craft.
A cookie sheet of gingerbread men and gingerbread girls is a fun way to practice addition!
Students can create a cookie sheet with different combinations of gingerbread. These make a fun display in the hallway around the holidays!
Another fun math activity for a gingerbread theme is this roll and color game. After rolling two dice, students will add up the total number of dots and color in the correct number.
It wouldn’t be a gingerbread theme without a taste test! After biting into a gingerbread man cookie, students can take a vote on what part of the gingerbread man they ate first.
After completing a class graph, students can document the first bite data on their own graphing worksheets.
Finally, you can fully embrace the holiday fun by putting together a Christmas thematic unit! Even though you’re having holiday fun as a class, students will still be hard at work.
Christmas read-alouds are such a fun option for literacy practice in December!
After reading “Mooseltoe” by Margie Palatini, students can create this sequencing craft to put the story events in order.
“Santa’s Stuck” by Rhonda Gowler Green is another fun story to read with your kindergarteners. Students can review the story elements with this adorable flip book and craft! Students can use this flip book to help them retell the story by describing the main character, setting, problem, and solution.
To bring some holiday fun to your math practice, students can put together their own holiday addition stories book.
Students will act out the stories with small paper manipulatives and then model the story problem with an addition sentence.
This roll-and-remove candy cane game is perfect for centers or as a station during a class Christmas party! Students will line up candy canes under a row of numbers and then roll the dice. They will then find the matching number and remove the corresponding candy cane.
If you’re going to have a holiday treat in your classroom, you can make it educational at the same time! After testing two different candy canes, students can vote on their favorite using a class graph.
When all of the voting is complete, students can complete their own worksheet to practice graphing and interpreting data.
To save you some time during this busy month, I’ve created a bundle with all of the December thematic units mentioned in this post. With one easy-to-download resources, you’ll be able to have festive learning experiences with your class all month long!
If you’d like to take a close look at everything included in this bundle, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
I know how busy life can be during this time, so be sure to save this post if you want to come back to it later. Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these fun kindergarten themes when you’re working on your December lesson plans.
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
