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As winter break approaches, it can be challenging to keep our young learners engaged in important skill practice. A great way to grab students’ attention and help them stay on task is through fun seasonal learning activities! In this post, I’m going to share some engaging kindergarten centers for December that will help your students practice math and literacy skills with a fun holiday twist!
There are many ways that students can practice sound, letter, and word recognition during your literacy centers. In fact, it’s the variety of these activities that will keep your students engaged in practicing a variety of literacy skills.
Your students will love putting gifts together by matching the pictures for rhyming words. They can also match pictures to the correct mailbox based on the ending sound they hear.
You can also bring some holiday fun to activities that practice beginning sounds! Students can match the letter on each elf card with the correct chimney. Your students will also practice identifying both beginning and ending sounds as they match gifts to the correct tree in order to build the word that matches the picture.
Students can also practice identifying vowel sounds in different word positions. The Stockings Full of Vowels center has students clip the correct middle vowel sound for the word on each card. This is great fine motor practice! You can also provide small manipulatives to cover the vowel sounds if you don’t have clothespins on hand.
You can also help students listen for beginning vowel sounds with this fun train-themed center! The All Aboard Beginning Vowels activity has students create trains for each vowel using pictures for words that start with each vowel sound.
If your students could use more practice with sight words, they will love the Mystery Sight Words activity! They will use a holiday picture code to help them spell common sight words.
Students can also build sight words with stockings to match the word on each fireplace in the Warming Up Our Sight Words center. A Sentence Unscramble activity can also be a helpful way to practice reading sight words. Your students can use their knowledge of basic sight words to read and build sentences.
Your students will love to practice building and reading CVC words with these holiday-themed activities! They can build short vowel words using gingerbread man letter cards to match the picture on each oven in the Baking Some CVC Words activity. The Landing on Words center helps your students practice their decoding skills. They will help elves land safely on the correct runway by matching pictures to CVC words.
A popular activity with young learners is the CVC Words Mystery Picture! Students will match CVC word cards to the correct pictures. As more cards are added to the mystery picture mat, a fun holiday scene will appear! Finally, your students can see patterns in CVC words by sorting pictures for the Decorating Word Families activity.
It takes a lot of repetition for students to master counting and other math skills. In order to keep students engaged in this repetition, it’s helpful to have a variety of fun activities on hand. Your students will love these hands-on math centers with a holiday twist!
Add some holiday fun to number sense practice with these engaging centers! Your students can practice representing numbers using tallies, ten frames, and base ten blocks. Your class will love putting together a holiday scene for the Counting Tallies Mystery Picture. They can also match a ten-frame of cookies with the correct glass of milk. Finally, students can practice representing numbers using base ten cubes as they match two halves of an ornament.
To help you differentiate centers for your students, the Merry Search center has counting practice options for both 1-10 or 11-20. You can also have your students practice counting by 10 with these fun wreath cards!
Dice games are also a great way to help students practice counting, as they roll and count the dots on the dice. The Lights Out and Four in a Row dice games are so fun that your students will want to play again and again!
For some addition practice, you can have your students complete Star Bright Sums! They will put stars on the correct Christmas trees to match each addition equation.
Rudolph Addition is also an engaging option for math practice! Students will solve the addition problems on each reindeer card and match them to the sleigh with the correct sum.
There are many ways to help students practice ordering numbers! The Gumdrop Hop center has students reorder three numbers, while the Counting Carts center has students identify the number that comes before and after a given number.
Self-correcting puzzles are also an engaging way to help students practice ordering numbers. This set of centers includes a variety of puzzle options to adjust the challenge for students.
The Merry Measure activity is an engaging way to practice nonstandard measurement! Students can use a line of red bows to measure a variety of holiday items.
Your students can also practice creating and continuing different types of patterns in the Bright Light Patterns activity. They can use colored light cards to help them as they create the patterns, then color the results on their recording sheets.
All of the activities shown above can be found in a bundle of literacy and math centers for December. It includes 28 interactive activities that will keep your students engaged in practicing important grade-level skills.
To encourage independence and increase accountability, each activity includes child-friendly illustrated instructions and a recording sheet. If you’d like to take a closer look at this bundle, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on Teachers Pay Teachers.
If you’d like to find these centers later, be sure to save this post! Just add the pin below to your favorite board on Pinterest so you can quickly find these December centers when you’re ready to download and print!
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!
