Are you looking for an easy way to keep your young toddlers engaged, learning, and having fun this holiday season? These easy toddler Christmas activities are just what you need. These fun ideas use items you probably already have around your home and will inspire you to get started today.
From Christmas learning activities and Christmas crafts to sensory bins and Christmas countdown ideas, you are sure to find so many activities that your toddler will love!
Christmas Learning Activities for Toddlers
This Snowball Transfer Activity is a favorite toddler Christmas activity every year. Put a bowl of cotton balls next to an ice cube tray or mold. Toddlers can put one snowball in each spot on the tray. It’s so simple and they love to do it over and over again.
Add tweezers or tongs for older toddlers that are ready for an extra challenging fine motor skills activity. Put dice with the activity to have practice with counting the snowballs. For toddlers, I like to make my own die with a wooden cube that includes the numbers 1 through 3 only. After awhile switch the pom poms to red and green to create new interest in the activity.
Christmas Tree Pom Pom Push Box
Make this pom pom push box with the free printable and a shoe box. Toddlers will practice color matching as they pick up each pom pom and push it through the hole. Picking up pom poms is great for strengthening the pincer grasp which is important for holding a pencil and writing. When all of the pom poms have been pushed through, open the box to dump them out and start again. Turn this into a listening activity. “Can you find the red pom pom and push it through?”.
Christmas Light Matching Activity
The free printable Christmas light matching activity is a fun way to practice color recognition. You can also turn the cards over and play Christmas Light Memory.
Use the Christmas light cards to make patterns (For example, red, green, red, green.). Write the letters of your child’s name on the lights and turn it into a Christmas light name activity. There are so many ways to use these cards!
Turn Christmas cards into puzzles for your toddler. Cut them in halves, thirds, or fourths to make DIY Christmas puzzles. Attach magnets to the back of the puzzles pieces and challenge your toddler to put together the puzzles on a vertical surface such as an easel or the refrigerator. Working on a vertical surface strengthens their core and shoulder muscles. It also means they will move their wrists in a different way to work with the pieces which strengthens wrist rotation. You can also put the puzzle pieces in a ziploc bag to take with you on the go. They are perfect for restaurants and waiting rooms.
Use pom poms, buttons, or gems with this free printable. Print two Christmas trees and the color cards. Challenge your toddler to sort the pom poms or buttons between the two trees.
Other Ideas
- Add tweezers or tongs for an extra fine motor skills challenge.
- You could also turn this into a dice game by rolling and counting to fill up the Christmas tree.
- Laminate the tree pages to turn them into play dough mats. Use play dough to decorate the Christmas trees. So fun!
Jingle bells are fun for toddlers to work with. Here we put smaller jingle bells into a bowl and the challenge was to scoop and transfer them to the other bowl. Another toddler activity with jingle bells is to get larger bells and lace them onto a pipe cleaner to make a jingle bell bracelet. Put jingle bells into a box to make a musical instrument. Shake the box of bells and sing!
This Christmas Tree Sticker Wall from Toddler Approved is so inviting! Working with stickers is so fun and so beneficial for toddlers. In this fun activity they will strengthen their pincer grasp and focus as they remove the stickers from the page.
Tip: Remove the background piece of a sticker page. Then, all that will be on the page are the actual stickers. That background piece won’t get in their way. It makes them easier to take off and less frustrating too.
If you don’t have a lot of stickers on hand, make the tree out of contact paper. Tape it to the wall (using painters tape) with the sticky side of the contact paper facing out. Cut different shapes out of construction paper and challenge your toddler to stick the ornaments to the tree.
Make a felt tree like they did at Princess Pinky Girl. They made detailed ornaments (which might be a little heavy). You can just cut simple shapes out of felt and let your toddler arrange them into their own ornaments.
If you are having trouble getting your felt pieces to stick to each other on a vertical surface, add a small piece of velcro to each ornament. That will help them attach to each other better.
This Christmas Tree Ball Sort from I Can Teach My Child looks like so much fun! Use a piece of cardboard from a box to make the tree. If you don’t have these specific balls that is ok! You can use colored blocks, pretend play food, pom poms, or even pieces of fabric to match and put through the holes.
Christmas Crafts for Toddlers
Make paint chip Christmas trees from Messy Little Monster. Cut the triangles out of green paint chips. Have your toddler decorate the triangles with buttons, stickers, or pieces of paper. Then, use a knife to cut a slit into a cork. Slide the triangle in and you have Christmas trees.
These would be fun to use in pretend play. Arrange them and have your toddler drive their cars around the Christmas trees. Or include them with your child’s favorite characters for Christmas inspired pretend play.
Even if your toddler doesn’t eat candy canes, they can still make them with this simple Christmas activity. Cut out a candy cane shape from red construction paper and rectangle stripes from white construction paper. Use a glue stick to attach the stripes. Don’t worry about if they are evenly spaced or spread out along the candy cane. Just allow your toddler to enjoy the process of gluing on the stripes.
Christmas Tree Shapes
Cut rectangles from green construction paper and then trim them so they get progressively shorter. Work with your toddler to arrange them from biggest to smallest. “Which one is the biggest?” Then, glue that piece to the page. “Now which one is the biggest?” Then, glue that rectangle above it. Continue until the tree is made.
You can use our Christmas tree shapes printable to make trees like this out of different shapes. Toddlers may need you to cut out the shapes before starting this activity. Then, challenge them to arrange the shapes from biggest to smallest. This is a fun way to talk about shapes and sizes.
Decorate Christmas tree cones and Christmas cookies. This is a fun Christmas activity for kids of all ages. We do this as a family every year.
To make Christmas tree cones, spread green frosting on a sugar cone and put it on a plate. Your toddler will stick different candies into the frosting to decorate their Christmas tree. Sprinkles are also fun to add to the dessert.
Toddler Made Christmas Ornaments
These are our top 5 favorite Christmas ornaments for toddlers to make.
- Make a reindeer handprint ornament.
- Thread pony beads onto a pipe cleaner to make a candy cane ornament.
- Lace beads onto pipe cleaners and then wrap them around popsicle sticks to make a 3D tree ornament.
- Pour paint into clear plastic bulbs and spread the paint by moving the ball around. These make great gifts for family members.
- Cut a candy cane shape out of craft foam and decorate it with buttons or craft foam stripes.
Free Printable Christmas Ornaments for Kids
Toddlers love to decorate the Christmas tree and move Christmas decorations around. To make this less stressful for me, I made printable ornaments for my toddler and put them toward the bottom of the tree so he could decorate and redecorate with them. If your toddler loves a certain character or animal, you can google search those images and print them to hang too.
Powerful Mothering has this free gingerbread man printable template to decorate and hang from your tree.
Christmas Sensory Bins
This is a great way for your child to retell the story of when Jesus was born.
Christmas tree sensory bin from Best Toys 4 Toddlers.
This sensory play includes rice as a base and different objects such as buttons, pipe cleaners, and 3D stars to move around and explore. If a sensory bin is too messy for you, try making a sensory bottle from Tea in the Wild.
This Peppermint Water Play from Fantastic Fun and Learning looks like so much fun! Can’t you just smell it? If you are hesitant to put real peppermint candy into the water, use peppermint oil to scent the water and add plastic candy canes or other Christmas trinkets to the water to explore.
Countdown to Christmas with Toddlers
For years we have counted down to Christmas with themed activities in our Activity Advent Countdown. These Christmas countdowns include a list of materials you need for each day and printable cards to set up your count down with.
Our favorite Christmas books for toddlers!
You can also countdown with books! Wrap each Christmas book that you have at home (even if your child has already read it). Check out books from the library if you don’t have 25 books. Put the wrapped books under the tree. Each day have your toddler pick on to unwrap and read together. Kids of all ages love this tradition. It is also a great visual to see how many days are left until Christmas by looking at how many books are still wrapped under the tree.
So which one of these toddler activities are you going to try first?