Top 5 Christmas Reading Activities for Kids

Christmas is a great opportunity to celebrate with fun, hands‑on and educational activities to keep those creative juices flowing over the holiday break. Below we've put together a list of our top five Christmas reading activities designed to keep your child entertained and practising important literacy skills while getting right into the festive spirit. Enjoy!

1. A Christmas Poem

Get your child to brainstorm things that remind them of Christmas. Encourage them to think about items, animals, foods, activities and emotions (e.g. excitement, surprise, happiness). Once they've thought up a good list of Christmas‑related things, help them compose a two‑verse poem, verse one beginning with the words “It's Christmas outside when…” followed by some descriptive sentences, and the second verse beginning with “It's Christmas at home when…” followed by more sentences.

2. Create a Christmas Scrapbook

Flip through newspapers, catalogues and magazines together and find things that remind you of Christmas to paste into a Christmas scrapbook. You can add your own drawings and family photos too! Get your child to label each of the things they have included in their scrapbook and encourage them to write the words clearly. For example, if you choose a photo of snow, have them write “This is snow.” as a caption. Say the words aloud or show them how to write certain words first if they need some extra help.

3. Write to Santa

Let your child practise their letter-writing skills by reviving this traditional Christmas pastime! Get your child to draft a wish list in proper letter form, complete with a date, salutation, a body paragraph, closing note and a signature. You can even get them to personalise the letter with information about themselves and how good they've been in the past year.

4. Santa Claus Alliteration

Alliterations are literary devices that children are expected to learn and recognise by the fourth grade. Just in case you've forgotten, alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds or the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words, a common feature in tongue twisters (e.g. Peter's piglet pranced proudly).

Have your child divide a piece of paper into three sections lengthwise. In the first column, write the heading “What Santa looks like”, in the second, write “What Santa does” and in the third “What Santa likes.” Brainstorm some descriptions for each column and work together with your child to come up with some silly, fun and nonsensical words that begin with the same letter or sound (e.g. “Santa sometimes steals soft socks to step into snowy streets”).

5. Santa Claus Adjectives

Imagine that you and your child have to explain who Santa Claus is to an alien! Encourage them to think of as many adjectives (describing words) as they can and get them to write a list of words to best explain who Santa Claus is. Discuss what an adjective means with your child first and ask them to point out examples in a paragraph or storybook beforehand.

When it’s time for less hands-on Christmas reading activities, cozy up with your little one and enjoy reading some Christmas stories from the ABC Reading Eggs library.