It’s coming up to the Christmas break, which means your students are full of beans and thinking lots of Christmassy-thoughts! What better way to help them spread the Christmas cheer (and give those beans a workout) than with some hilarious Christmas games for the classroom?
We’ve trawled the net to find some of the best Christmas games to help you make those last final days of term memorable and fun! And to make extra-sure that they were as hilarious as could be, we tested each game out in the Teach Starter office – all in the name of research, of course!
Christmas Games for the Classroom
These Christmas games are fun for the whole class! If you have students in your classroom who don’t celebrate Christmas, then check out our Tricks in 60 Ticks – Classroom Party Games.
Snow Shovel Race
Whether your Christmas is in a hot or a cold location, you can still enjoy some snow-themed games in the classroom! This minute-to-win-it game pits your students against the clock in a race to clean up their snow (aka cotton balls!).
How to Play:
Divide your students into two teams. Each team gets one set of chopsticks and one bowl. The aim of this game is for students to tidy up as many cotton balls as they can using nothing but the set of chopsticks. They can only collect them one by one, and they must race the one-minute timer! The catch? The teacher can call out ‘swap!’ at any time and a new team member must take over! The team who has collected the most ‘snowballs’ at the end of the minute is the winning team.
Equipment:
- a minute-timer
- one set of chopsticks per team
- a pile of cotton balls for the students to collect (how many depends on the fine motor skills of your students!)
- one bowl for the ‘snow’ collection per team
Jingle Bell Toss
This ‘charming’ game has a mathematical twist that makes it fun AND educational!
How to Play:
Set up a set of paper cups with values written inside them. The values can be as simple as single-digit numbers (for younger students) or as complex as mixed fractions (for those wanting a challenge!).
Instruct your students to stand a certain distance away and try to throw a set number of jingle bells each into the cups. Add up the numbers from where the jingle bells land, and the student with the highest total is the winner!
Equipment:
- 3 jingle bells – 6 jingle bells depending on the skills of your students
- a set of 10 cups with values written inside them
Why not put a group challenge on it and see which group comes up with the ultimate high number?
Pin the Nose on Rudolph
This is a fun Christmas twist on a classic party game!
How to Play:
Place a large picture of Rudolph on your classroom wall. Students take turns to put on a blindfold and spin around 3 times before trying to blutack Rudolph’s nose on the end of his face! Alternatively, project a picture of Rudolph on your whiteboard, spin around 3 times while blindfolded and try to draw a nose on Rudolph with a red whiteboard marker!
The student who places the nose as close to the ‘real’ nose position is the winner!
Equipment:
- a blindfold
- a large picture of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer- We’ve created the Pin the Nose on Rudolph – Class Game so you can download and away you go! We suggest printing it on A3 or larger.
- something to represent Rudolph’s nose per student – you can use the cut-outs from our Rudolph resource, or something fun like a red pompom. But, it must have students’ initials placed on it so you can easily tell the winner!
- something to adhere the nose to the picture of Rudolph – either blutack or sticky-tape.
Draw a Christmas Picture
This is a drawing challenge – with a crazy catch! Students’ drawings can look a bit abstract at the best of times… but what if they were drawing without looking at what they were doing?
How to play:
Give each student a paper plate and a pencil. Instruct the students to place the paper plate on their heads! This becomes their canvas. Give your students a drawing challenge for them to draw onto the paper plate while it’s up top – no peeking!
Ideas for what to draw can be incredibly simple – you don’t want to make it too difficult! Why not ask students to draw a Christmas tree, candy cane or wrapped gift? The best/most accurate picture is the winner! You can even call in a third party, such as a teacher from another classroom to judge.
Equipment:
- one paper plate per student
- one pencil per student
I’ve used our editable Desk Name Tags – Christmas to make some hilarious suggestions!
Snowball Bowling
This game can be played inside or outside the classroom! This simple take on ten-pin bowling has a cute Christmas twist.
How to play:
Put students into groups of 4 or 5. Allocate a ‘laneway’, a set of skittles and a ‘bowling ball’ to each group. You can make your laneways by drawing chalk lines on the pavement, placing skipping ropes longways on the ground, or using tape on the carpet!
Your students now take it in turns to bowl the ball down the laneway towards their skittles. For each skittle they knock down, they receive a point. The person who has the most points at the end of 3 rounds of bowling is the winner!
Equipment:
- 8-10 skittles per group. Repurpose something quick and easy, such as empty water bottles with a little Christmas ribbon tied around them, or go all out and paint some ‘snowman’ themed tin cans or paper cups! It’s a great idea to ask your class to bring in clean tin cans to decorate for the day leading up to the games so that it’s a whole class effort.
- One ‘bowling ball’ per group – something white, such as a large pair of white socks rolled into a ball.
Decorate a Tree Relay
As you can see from these photos, the Teach Starter staff had great fun playing this Christmas game in the office!
How to play:
In this fun game, students race against the clock to decorate their ‘Christmas tree’! Provide each team with an array of Christmas decorations. Say “Freeze”! One person on the team must freeze in position as the ‘tree’ and stay frozen for the duration of the game – they may not move and they may not help their team. Next, say “Decorate!” and start the clock for a one minute count down. The only rule is they must stop when the clock runs out! The team with the best decorated ‘tree’ is the winning team.
Equipment:
- an array of decorations per team (if you can’t get your hands on decorations, why not use sporting equipment such as cones, bibs and hoola hoops?)
- one person per team to act as the tree
Christmas Charades
This one is for the older kids!
A game of charades has long been a favourite of many teachers. Put a fun Christmas-time spin on your charades by creating some of your own actions for students to follow.
Some suggestions include:
- Working as an elf in Santa’s Workshop.
- Unwrapping the most exciting present in the world!
- Santa Claus climbing down the chimney with a sack of presents.
How to Play:
Divide the class up into two teams. One person from each team comes forward and pulls a suggestion action out of a hat. They must then act out this action in front of their team, while their team mates try to guess what they are doing! Once the correct action has been guessed, they put down a point. Another team member comes forward and pulls out another suggestion to act out and the game continues! Your teams can either take it in turns to act out the activities, or they can race each other to get as many actions guessed in a set amount of time.
Equipment:
- A set of Christmas-themed ‘action’ cards. I printed out a blank copy of our Desk Name Tags – Christmas and wrote down some actions myself!
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