Kindergarten Winter Break Packet Ideas

Winter break can be challenging for kindergarteners who have just spent months getting used to being at school! An easy way to minimize backtracking is to send home some engaging learning activities for students to work on over the break. In this post, I’m going to share some activity ideas for a kindergarten winter break packet.

The Benefits of a Winter Break Packet

You might be wondering why students should take home a packet of learning activities over the winter break: Isn’t it supposed to be a break from schoolwork? Here are a few reasons why it can be helpful to send home a winter break packet with your students.

• Maintain Connection with Students: Two weeks is a LONG time in the life of a young kindergartener! By sending home a few fun learning activities for students to do during the break, you can help them maintain a connection to school.
• Prevent Regression: It’s common for young students to regress in some of their academic skills over long breaks from school. We think mostly of the summer slide, but it’s also possible for students to lose some ground during winter break. Some fun learning activities can help students keep their skills sharp!
• Provide Activities for Families: Many families appreciate having some worthwhile activities for their children to do during holiday road trips or even at home to break up the screen time. 
• Prevent Waste: December is a busy month in the classroom! It’s common to print off activities that don’t get used during the month. While you could definitely tuck them into a filing cabinet for next year, you could also prevent waste by adding them to a winter break packet!

If you think your students could benefit from a packet of fun learning activities over the winter break, keep reading! I’ll share some ideas of activities you could include in your winter break packets.

Kindergarten Winter Break Packet Ideas

With everything your students have learned so far in the school year, it can be overwhelming to narrow down the review activities you’d like to include in a winter break packet. To help you streamline your options, I’m sharing some of my must-haves:

Phonics

Kindergarteners have come a long way in their phonics knowledge by the time winter break rolls around. They have learned to identify the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make. They have learned how to blend letters together to read words. They have also learned how to use their phonics knowledge to spell simple words. 

In order to help students maintain these skills over the break, you can include some engaging phonics practice in your packets. This activity is a great example! Students can read the words on the page and then draw a line to the matching picture. This is a simple activity that can go a long way in helping students think about phonics over the break.

Sight Words

By winter break, kindergarteners have also been able to build a bank of sight words that helps them read and write simple sentences. A winter break packet can include some sight word practice so students can maintain their sight word knowledge while they’re away from school. There are many different activities that you can use to make this fun and engaging for students!

For example, this holiday-themed activity has students choose the best sight word to finish the sentence. Then, they can copy the complete sentence onto the page for some writing practice. It’s always helpful when an activity can practice more than one skill!

Counting

It’s also helpful to add some counting and number sense skill practice to a winter break packet. These are foundational skills that students need to maintain for future math concepts! There are many different counting skills that kindergarteners can practice while they’re away from school.

For example, students can practice counting by tens with this Christmas-themed activity. First, they will cut and paste the holiday lights in order on the page. Then, they will write the numbers on the lines provided. Finally, they can count and color a group of ten gingerbread men. This is great practice for one-to-one correspondence!

Addition

By the time winter break arrives, your students will likely be working on foundational addition skills. Including some addition review in your winter break packet will help students get right back into the swing of things when they get back to school!

This activity is a fun example of how students can practice addition with a simple, festive worksheet. Students will count and record the number of dots on a domino, then write the sum on the gingerbread man.

Holiday-Themed Activities

Overall, it’s helpful to include a variety of holiday-themed activities in your winter break packet. It’s a simple way to make the activities special and more engaging for students. It won’t feel like they’re just doing school assignments at home.

Instead, it can feel like a fun activity packet that they were given to enjoy over the break. You could even send them home with a Christmas pencil to use as they complete the activities.

Printable Winter Homework Activities

If you want to save a lot of prep time as you put together winter break packets for your students, just grab a set of homework activities! These engaging, seasonal activities are perfect for a winter break packet because they are designed to be developmentally appropriate and engaging for kindergarteners. Students can have fun with these festive activities while they work to keep their skills sharp while they’re away from school.

If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.

Save These Winter Break Packet Ideas

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite Pinterest board of teaching ideas. You’ll be able to quickly find these ideas when you’re preparing winter break activities for your students.