Two Quick Christmas Book-related Activities

Do you know the Crayons series by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers? What about the Macca books by Matt Stanton? Both these picture book collections have a Christmas titles that are so much fun. This year, for our final few library lessons, I put together a few very quick and easy Christmas activities that tie in with the books.

We started by reading the books together as a class.

The Crayons’ Christmas

The Crayons’ Christmas comes with pockets full of pop-outs, letters and cute activity ideas. While these might only be good for one use only and not practical to use as a class, I took the ideas and used them as fun activities. I divided the class into small groups and we completed each activity as a rotation. As a group we played the Christmas board game in one of the book pockets. We used crayons as game pieces – you just need a die.

We wrote Christmas letters and cards to someone we might not usually write to. Inspired by the letters and cards inside the book, I asked the students to think about the people they might write Christmas cards to – family, teachers, classmates. And then I asked them to think about someone who might not get a card or who they might not usually write to and I asked the students to write them a Christmas letter. The students chose toys, pets the school crossing man and others in their community to thank and wish a happy holidays.

We also created our own Peach crayon and made him some clothes.

There are so many other activity ideas you can get from this book – like making a dreidel and creating your own Christmas decorations.

The Crayons’ Christmas would make the perfect gift at Christmas time, but it also makes a great book to read and share with a class.

Macca’s Christmas Crackers

What better activity for Macca’s Christmas Crackers than to make Christmas crackers. With a small piece of cardboard that is rolled into a cylinder (no using old toilet rolls, thank you), we wrote our own jokes and make Christmas hats. We then wrapped that in paper and tied the ends up with string.