Christmas Themed Math Activities

If we can do Christmas themed language arts activities, we can do Christmas math, too.

Kindergarten Worksheets and Games has a bunch of printable math worksheets for younger kids, including skip counting, greater than/less than, I-spy with counting and more, all with a winter/holiday theme.

Mashup Math has some Christmas-themed math riddles for kids to try. Think logic puzzles where kids have to figure out how many there are of something or how much something costs based on the clues in the word problem.

Little Bins for Little Hands has a great collection of free printable Christmas related math activities. You’ll find Grinch themed graphic, a Santa dice rolling game, playdough mats with counting activities, secret word math puzzles and more.

Older kids can use these ideas from Make Sense of Math for some holiday-themed math learning. Solve problems with a snowball fight, plan a holiday meal or use problem solving on holiday themed puzzles. Some of these ideas involved paid products you can find here.

Speaking of paid resources, this holidays around the world math pack from Amanda Stitt at Teachers Pay Teachers looks like a lot of fun for middle schoolers. It includes information about different winter holidays (such as Christmas, Kwanzaa, Diwali and Los Posadas) and how they are celebrated around the world, with math skills integrated into the lessons. For example kids can determine the average temperature around Christmas in Australia, which country has the most people who celebrate Kwanzaa, or solve a word problem to discover how much money the children were gifted for Lunar New Year.

Teaching with Kaylee B has more paid printable math activities good for elementary school kids. I love the “Don’t Eat Pete” game, which is a way to practice math facts (and eat a little candy) you can do throughout the year, but this one has holiday themed clip art to make it a fun Christmas math game.

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Christmas Language Arts Activities

Human brains are pretty amazing, allowing us to think, feel, create, communicate, move and more. But humans aren’t the only animals with cool brains, as Crab Museum explains in the book The No-Brainer Brain Explainer (illustrated by Bruno Valasse).

This book, aimed at kids in grades 1-4, is colorful and silly but also educational about how brains actually work, with billions of neurons sending electrical and chemical signals around the body.

“Everything we think, feel and experience comes from an electrical relay race, with neurons passing chemical batons to each other,” the book says. “The constant chatter of billions of brain cells creates your entire world.”

The book compares the brains of mammals to those of crabs (the book is “written” by a crab after all) and notes that crabs have fewer neurons and of course are much smaller, but they have separate parts of their brains that control their eyes and their legs. Crabs are also capable of remembering things, using tools and solving puzzles.

Some animals’ brains allow them to know more about their world in different ways from humans, such as spiders being sensitive to vibrations in their webs and catfish having an amazing sense of taste, with taste sensors all over their bodies.

It notes that 95 percent of brain activity goes toward things we do unconsciously, like breathing, walking and catching a ball flying toward us. It also talks about dreams, memory, how our emotions try to predict the future, where brains came from and fun facts about brains. For example, did you know a sperm whale is believed to have the biggest brain of any creature that’s even lived? Their brains weigh 18 pounds, compared to just 2.5 pounds for humans.

Information on what creatures have the smallest brains, the toughest brains, the most brains and those who actually eat their own brains will delight kids (and maybe gross them out a little bit). They’ll also enjoy learning about the mycelium network of fungi, which is like a brain without a body, and slime molds, which are like a brain without a brain.

It ends talking about why human brains are so special because we’ve found ways to work together, communicate and build communities on a scale bigger than any other animal.

Kids and adults alike will enjoy this colorful, silly and informational book about brains!

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $19.99.

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