Christmastime is almost upon us, and we are sure you want to get into the spirit of things. It is an exciting time for everyone, but especially for your students.
You may be thinking about how you can decorate your classroom in a way that will help your students feel excited for Christmas, but also excited about learning.
How can you get the children to look forward to the upcoming festivities without fully distracting them from their studies?
In this article, we have compiled a list of ideas on how you can make your classroom festive during the holiday season. More specifically, we have put together a list of ways that you can decorate your classroom door for Christmas.
Decorating the classroom door is a fun activity that teachers can do all year around, not just during the holidays. However, you may want to use more festive designs during this time of year!
You could always just throw some tinsel and fairy lights onto the door, but where’s the fun in that? Now is the time to get creative!
So, here are 15 festive classroom door ideas for you to use over this festive season.
Let’s get started!
1. ‘A Cozy Fireplace’ Classroom Door
This design will make those entering the room feel all cozy and festive before they even set foot through the door.
Cover the top half of the door with a red brick pattern: either cover the door with red paper and add white lines to create ‘bricks’, or find a wallpaper with a brick pattern.
For the bottom half, add a black square for the fireplace, and use glitter, orange-dyed cotton balls, ribbons, and other decorations to create the fire.
For added effect, you could ask your students to design Christmas cards to place above the fireplace.
2. ‘Post-It Note Christmas Tree’ Classroom Door
Do you have a load of sticky notes lying around? Why not turn them into a Christmas tree decoration?
All you need to do to create this design is use green colored post-it notes to create the shape of a Christmas tree! You will need quite a lot of sticky notes to create a full tree – roughly 80 sticky notes in total.
You could place a yellow sticky note on top of the star, and add a couple of different colors to represent baubles. You can write little notes of positivity on some sticky notes for the children to read!
3. ‘Student Elves On The Shelves’ Classroom Door
Elf on The Shelf has become one of the most popular Christmas characters. So why not bring this character into your classroom? Better yet, you can use photographs of your students to turn them into elves on the shelf!
Print off photographs of your students, and cut their faces out. On the door, add strips of brown paper or cardboard to create ‘shelves’, and use craft materials to create the elves’ bodies.
Then, stick the photos of the children’s heads on top of the bodies, and there you have it! Your students are now Elves on The Shelves.
You could even create an elf wearing a different color (e.g., green, contrasting to the other elves wearing red) and add a photograph of your own face, making yourself the Teacher Elf.
4. ‘Chillin’ With My Snowmies’ Classroom Door
For this classroom door display, you will need to create a load of snowmen to fill up the door frame. You can do this by cutting out different sized circles out of white paper or cardboard, and assemble from largest to smallest to create snowmen.
Use different craft materials to decorate the snowmen: e.g., you could glue buttons on for the eyes, and use pipe cleaners for the arms. Use cotton balls to add texture to the snowmen’s bodies.
The title, ‘Chillin’ With My Snowmies’ is, of course, a play on the phrase, ‘Chillin’ With My Homies’. This will surely make your students giggle when they see it written in bold lettering on the board.
5. ‘Welcome To The Polar Express’ Classroom Door
The Polar Express is one of the best loved Christmas movies of the past few decades, having the ability to get anyone into the festive spirit.
Make class more exciting by turning your classroom door into the entrance of the Polar Express, making your students believe that they are getting on board the train.
The easiest way to do this is by decorating the door to imitate the front of a train, using black, yellow and beige cards to create shapes that will make up the train’s front. You could add til foil for the light on the front of the train, so that when light reflects off it, it will look like it is lighting up.
Don’t forget to add the title, ‘Welcome Onto The Polar Express’, and/or some smaller lettering spelling out, ‘All Aboard!’
6. ‘The Holidays Are Among Us’ Classroom Door
As we’re sure you know, Among Us is one of the most popular games that children play these days. Use it as a theme to get your students excited for Christmas.
You will need the following colors to create the characters: red, orange, yellow, lime green, dark green, cyan, dark blue, purple, pink, brown, white, and black.
Again, you could use tin foil to create the faces, and use black marker to draw the outlines. Add Santa Claus hats, angel wings, and halos to the characters.
Organize the characters around the door, and add the title ‘The Holidays Are Among Us’ in bold lettering.
7. ‘Class Is An Open Door’ Classroom Door
It seems that Disney’s Frozen will never go out of fashion, despite the film having come out almost a whole decade ago.
This franchise is still as popular as ever, and although these are not Christmas movies, the use of snow and winter mean that the characters can be used for Christmas themes and decorations.
The song ‘Love is an Open Door’ is popular among young children, and it can be used as a pun to create a Frozen-themed classroom door.
Create the popular characters – e.g. Olaf the snowman and Princess Anna – using craft materials, and stick them to the door, and add a speech bubble with the words ‘Class is an Open Door’.
8. ‘A Bunch Of Smart Cookies’ Classroom Door
Is your class filled with some smart cookies? Show them how clever they are by writing this title in bold letters on the door, paired with a load of chocolate chip cookies.
Cut circles out of brown sheets of paper. You can either draw on chocolate chips with a pen, or you can get creative by sticking other materials to create the chips, such as buttons, beads, etc.
Add a cookie cutter shape to the top of the door, and then cut out the circle shape from each cookie. Stick the cookies onto the door, and write the title ‘A Bunch of Smart Cookies’ in large letters.
9. ‘Welcome To Whoville’ Classroom Door
This idea is similar to the ‘Welcome to The Polar Express entry, but this time, you will be creating an entrance to the home of the famous, mean, green character who stole Christmas.
Using green, red and yellow cardboard or paper, cut out shapes to create the Grinch in his entirety. Use cotton balls to add to his Santa hat, and use black pens to create outlines.
Use tape to attach the pieces together, and use scissors to cut out the shapes. Once complete, stick the pieces to the door, and write ‘Welcome To Whoville’ in big letters.
10. ‘Do You Want To Build A Snowman?’ Classroom Door
Here is another Frozen-themed doorway for those who know that their students are obsessed with the movie franchise.
Add a large image of Olaf the snowman, using different craft materials, and then ask your students to create their own snowmen using sheets of paper. Encourage them to get creative while ‘building’ their own snowmen!
Once they have all finished, pin each snowman onto the doorway, displaying each snowman for everybody to see.
11. ‘Santa’s Grotto (With Post Box)’ Classroom Door
If your class is filled with young children, many of them will be writing letters to send to Santa Claus. You can decorate the classroom door to look like the entrance to Santa’s Grotto, and add a ‘post box’ that they can use to post their letters.
You can either design a 2-D post box using paper, or you could go a step further and create a 3-D post box: just make sure that it is made from light materials so that you can pin it to the door.
As a class activity, ask them to write letters to send to Santa. Then, tell them to put their letters into the post box on the door! This is a fun, interactive way to get your students excited for Christmas.
12. ‘WARNING: Elves At Work’ Classroom Door
Here is another fun classroom door design that is personalized and interactive.
Using craft materials, create elf bodies for each member of your class. Then, print off photographs of your students, cut out their faces, and glue them onto the elf bodies. Pin the elves onto the door (similar to the ‘Student Elves on The Shelves’ idea).
Either buy some yellow ‘caution’ tape, or create your own using ribbons, and drape them all across the door. Add the title, ‘WARNING: Elves At Work’, and watch as the children giggle when they see their own faces pinned up on the door.
13. ‘Around The (Snow) Globe’ Classroom Door
This is a fun way to not only get your students excited for the festive season, but to also teach them some geography along the way.
Cut out a large circle from a sheet of blue paper, and, using green paper, cut out the countries of the world. Attach the countries to the blue circle, creating a globe.
Then, use other materials to make the globe look like a snow globe, e.g., adding cotton balls on the bottom of the circle to look like fallen snow.
Pin the globe to the door, and encourage your students to learn each continent on the globe. Then, ask them where you are on the globe. This is a fun, interactive way to teach them about geography.
14. ‘Santa’s Naughty And Nice Lists’ Classroom Door
Is your class filled with a bunch of snow angels, or are there one or two Grinches in your class? If this is the case, why not display a list of naughty and nice lists in your classroom?
Use an A4 piece of cardstock, and draw a line down the middle. On one side of the cardstock, write ‘Naughty List’. On the other side, write ‘Nice List’.
Decorate the rest of the door as you wish, adding snowflakes and snowmen: get creative! Once the display is complete, write each of the students’ names on smaller, separate pieces of paper, and use pins to pin them onto the side of the door.
Each morning, tell your students that, if they behave well, their names will be pinned on the ‘nice’ list. If not, they will be placed on the ‘naughty’ list. This will encourage the children to behave well, or at least, try to change their behavior by the end of the school day.
15. ‘Countdown To Christmas’ Classroom Door
Lastly, here is a fun way to spread holiday cheer throughout your classroom.
Create a festive wreath using plastic leaves, red pom poms for berries, and other craft materials. Make sure that it is large enough to leave a lot of space in the center.
Using brightly colored cardstock, cut out a bunch of numbers, but don’t permanently glue them onto the door. Inside the wreath, write ‘days until Christmas’ at the bottom.
Then, for each day that passes, use tacks to pin the numbers above the writing, showing how many days are left until Christmas.
E.g., on December 1st, you will pin the numbers ‘2’ and ‘4’ above the writing, showing that there are 24 days left until Christmas.
Final Thoughts
We hope these 15 ideas have inspired you to find ways to add a bit of holiday cheer into your classroom. This can be a busy time of year, and it can feel like you don’t have enough time to do everything you need to.
However, we hope that these activities will help you to take a few minutes out of your day to create something special for your students.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
