Celebrating the holidays is often the absolute highlight of the year for many young people. Of course, it’s a time of jubilation, love, and peace, and most schools close over the Christmas period to make it easier to celebrate the holidays.
One of the best ways to help children to celebrate the holidays is to throw them a holiday-themed party, filled with plenty of games and activities, and even a little bit of education so that they remember the driving spirit behind the season!
However, coming up with games to play at a holiday party is often much easier said than done, so you’ve likely found your way here because you want to know some of the very best holiday party games you can play in the classroom.
You’ve come to the best place. Today, we’ve compiled a list of some of the very best classroom holiday party games that the kids will all love, and that will help them to get into the holiday mood. Dive in below to get started!
Cardboard Gingerbread House
There are few holiday activities quite as iconic as building a gingerbread house, a delectable treat made to be displayed and then eaten further down the line.
The only problem is, building a gingerbread house requires some fairly careful control, and encouraging the children to exercise such care could be a little difficult.
It could also be difficult to get the kids to resist the temptation to eat up the gingerbread house before it’s been made!
With some cardboard pieces, some glue, and various crafting tools, the kids can easily build their own awesome gingerbread houses without any need to get sticky with icing.
To add to this, they don’t have to worry about the houses going bad, and they can take them home to decorate with!
This is a great activity to implement at a holiday party, because it allows the kids to engage their imaginations, and keeps their hands busy.
This makes it particularly great for some of the quiet or shy kids. The social aspect of building the houses can also make for a great bond-building opportunity!
Holiday Trivia
One of the simplest games to implement into your holiday party is a trivia game. Trivia games are great because not only do they allow for plenty of healthy competition, but they can also be used as a way to subtly blend in a little bit of education.
Holiday trivia can be played in a range of ways, and the questions can be totally up to you. For example, you could base the questions off of trivia around the Nativity, or you could base the trivia questions on favorite holiday movies and songs.
To help keep the kids satisfied, and to help increase the social bonds between the kids, we recommend dividing them up into even teams, and asking them to decide on, and write down, an answer to each question.
The team with the most correct answers is the winner! This will encourage the children to confer with one another, and will also teach them how to control their voices to not be so loud as to give away any answers.
This game is also great if you need a very simple game that can help to kill a good amount of time. Setting up the teams and finding the right questions takes barely any time at all!
If you’re having trouble coming up with trivia questions, take a look at some of the amazing options online!
Pin The Nose On Rudolph
‘Pin The Tail On The Donkey’ is one of the most iconic party games of all time still enjoyed by people of all ages. It’s not uncommon to see the game still played at parties amongst adults!
You can easily adapt the game to fit with a part theme by changing it to a Rudolph theme. Simply change the tail for a red nose, and the donkey for Rudolph!
Divide the children into small groups, and then allow each child to slowly approach Rudolph, one at a time, attempting to pin the red nose onto his face. The child that gets it closest is the winner of that small group.
This game is easy to set up and can result in some great fits of laughter as the kids see some of the funny results of pasting Rudolph’s nose into place.
Holiday Charades
Charades is one of the most popular party games in the world, precisely because of how fun it is to play. The game is incredibly fun for children especially, as it is fun for them to act.
You can make the game specific for the holidays by giving the children some holiday-specific things to act out.
The kids will quickly be giggling along when they see each other making silly shapes and making silly guesses.
Some of the things you could get them to act out could include things like ‘Frost The Snowman’, or ‘Christmas Tree’, to really challenge them to make specific shapes, or get a little more creative to express certain things.
Santa Says
We all know the classic game of ‘Simon Says’, but you can make it even more appropriate for a holiday party by swapping ‘Simon’ for ‘Santa’!
Gather the kids into a space in the room and ask them to follow the commands that Santa gives. For example, you could say: ‘Santa says: Touch your nose!’, and the kids would have to touch their nose.
If you give a command without saying ‘Santa Says’ first, then any child that follows the command will be eliminated. The game keeps going until there is only one child left in the game!
To make this game even more exciting and memorable for the kids, you could actually have someone dressed up as Santa Claus giving out the commands. The children won’t soon forget this amazing and magical moment.
Christmas Musical Statues
‘Musical Statues’ is a great game to play with the children of your class because it can lead to some very hilarious situations.
The game involves playing music for the children to dance to, and then intermittently pausing the music. When the music is paused, the children must stop dancing and hold their last pose for as long as they can until the music comes back on.
When you do pause the music for the children, encourage them to look around the room and look at some of the funny shapes the other children have taken up. They’ll be giggling in no time, which adds an extra layer of challenge to the game.
Any child that can’t hold their shape for too long will be eliminated from the game, which helps to add some competition to it all.
And even when the children have been eliminated from the game, they will still be able to laugh along at some of the funny frozen poses!
You can easily make this a holiday-themed variation on the game by playing Christmas hits and Christmas songs that can easily get all of the children into the holiday spirit!
Santa Scavenger Hunt
Creating a scavenger hunt can be a great way to make the most of your classroom space, allowing you to maximize the use of every nook and cranny to hide small clues and prizes for the children to hunt for.
Divide the children into small groups, or simply allow them to head off on their own with a set of clues that they must use to piece together Santa’s scavenger hunt and lead them closer to Santa’s ultimate prize.
This great holiday variation on the classic scavenger hunt game will easily keep the children entertained for ages and allows them to develop their mental acuity.
They will need to carefully piece together each of the clues you give them to get to the prize, which will help them to develop their mental facilities, and their ability to problem solve with only a few limited clues.
The prizes that the children earn at the end of the game help to make the game feel even more rewarding, helping to make it incredibly memorable.
To Wrap Up
There you have it! These are just a few of the amazing games that you can implement into the next holiday party that you plan for your class.
Each of these amazing games offers a different experience and helps to increase the social cohesion of the class.
These games help to get the children into the holiday spirit, while also allowing them a perfect opportunity to interact and bond with one another.
These games are also a great way to get the children into the holiday spirit, ready to celebrate the holidays with their families once the semester ends.
Why not try some of these games the next time you throw a holiday party for your class? We’re sure they will go down a total hit!
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!
