The holidays can bring a lot of extra energy to your classroom. That can be a good thing, and it can also be challenging. In either case, it can be really helpful to have some fun classroom activities in your back pocket. You can use these as incentives, rewards, activities for extra time at the end of the class period, a way to build classroom community, or a fun way to celebrate the holiday season.
Whatever your need, here are a few tech-powered activities that you may want to consider using in your classroom during the holiday season:
- Sharing Your Holiday Story: Check out the AVID Open Access article, Amplifying Student Voices: Sharing Holiday Stories and Traditions, for more details about ways to have students share their holiday stories. The article includes fun ways to give your students a voice in sharing their personal holiday experiences and traditions.
- Holiday Trivia: For this one, you can pick your favorite quiz tool, with some potential options including Kahoot!, Quizizz, Socrative, and Quizlet. With many of these, you can find holiday quizzes that are already created and saved in the public collection of quizzes. If you can’t find one already made to use, consider involving your students in the process. Have them generate the quiz questions and answers. They can do this individually or in groups. Not only does it get students actively involved, but it also gives them a sense of ownership in the activity and supports their ability to build questions that pertain to their own interests and experiences. It’s also a way to make sure that every student in your room feels like their holiday celebration of choice is acknowledged and seen.
- Virtual Classroom Playlist: Have each student pick a holiday song, or a piece of winter-themed music, to add to a collaborative playlist on a platform like Spotify or YouTube. It’s a great way to celebrate diverse interests, and you can have each student explain why they chose their song or share how it connects to their personal traditions. This can serve as an engaging way to integrate public speaking and communication standards into the classroom.
- Coding Holiday Animations: Scratch and Code.org are a couple platforms that offer holiday-themed coding projects that you can use for free in your classroom. With these sites, students can create animated winter scenes or simple holiday games and explore coding fundamentals while designing something festive. This might be a nice extension to CSEdWeek and Hour of Code activities.
- Green Screen Winter Wonderland: Using a green screen app like Do Ink or a video editing suite like iMovie, students can transport themselves to a winter wonderland, a holiday market, or even the North Pole! They can create short videos sharing holiday stories, favorite traditions, or even a “holiday weather report.” Students have so much fun when they create these, and it’s really rewarding to see the final products. You might choose to show the finished videos during a holiday party or reward day before winter break.
- Creating Holiday Cards: Tools like Canva and Adobe Express are perfect for this. In fact, check out the AVID Open Access article, Thank-You Card Templates and Generators. While that article talks about creating thank-you cards specific to Thanksgiving, the same idea applies across the winter holidays. Students can create greeting cards for their families, classmates, or teachers. It can be a great way to get students celebrating the season, while being creative and spreading positive energy.
- Digital Holiday Storybooks: Have students write and create their own holiday-themed stories using digital storytelling tools, like Book Creator or StoryJumper. Encourage them to use their imaginations and bring in personal interests. When they are finished, you might consider having them share these with another classroom or perhaps read them to younger students. It can be a great way to bring in an authentic audience to the experience.
- Holiday Podcast Episode: Podcasts are relatively easy to create and give students a chance to use their voice. You could have students create short holiday-themed audio stories or interviews and record them using simple recording tools—like Audacity, Soundtrap, or GarageBand—or audio recorders in apps, like Seesaw. They could discuss their favorite traditions, tell winter jokes, or even create a holiday “news report.”
- Winter Digital Art Contest: You might host a digital art contest where students create holiday or winter scenes and then showcase their art in a virtual gallery. You can use tools as simple as Google Slides or Google Drawings, suites of tools like Canva or Adobe Express, drawing tools in apps like Seesaw, or digital white boards like Whiteboard.fi or Ziteboard. There are so many tools available, and your students probably know of some that you haven’t seen yet. Don’t be afraid to ask them for ideas.
- Decorating Your Room: It’s important that students see themselves in the space where they are learning and connecting. One really effective way to make sure that happens is to involve them in decorating the classroom space. This might be a section of a bulletin board set aside for the holiday season, a wall that has some bare space, student desktops, art hanging from the ceiling via strings, or art taped to windows. Two effective design tools that you can use are Canva and Adobe Express. Again, you can involve your students in the planning of this. They will feel empowered—and likely excited to be a part of it.
Whatever you choose, have fun forging these connections with your students. It can be a great way to bring warmth and joy to your classroom during the holiday season.
AVID Connections
This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:
- Relational Capacity
- Student Agency
Extend Your Learning
- 5 Super Easy Holiday Activities for Any Classroom (Project School Wellness)
- Classroom Activities Before Winter Break (TeacherLists)
- 7 Engaging Lesson Ideas for Teaching Holidays in the Classroom (Flocabulary)
- 5 Fun Winter Themed and Holiday Classroom Activities for Students (Nearpod)