December arrives in a kindergarten classroom like a gust of cold air through the door. One child is humming a holiday song before the bell. Another is telling the table about the lights on their street. A third is already asking how many days until the break. The excitement is real, and it does not go away if you ignore it. The smarter move is to give it a job. When the gingerbread, the penguins and the stockings show up inside the math and literacy work itself, children stop waiting for the fun part of the day and start finding it in the work.
That is the idea behind this four-week plan. It is built around a 66-page December packet for kindergarten, with review value for first grade, that pairs a daily literacy slot and a daily math slot with Christmas themes: gingerbread, holiday lights, penguins, cocoa, stockings and snow. Many activities come in two levels, so the same theme can stretch across a class where some children are still learning letter sounds and others are already reading short words. This guide walks through the month week by week, explains what to teach in each stretch, and shows how to keep the routine steady when assemblies, parties and early dismissals start eating into your schedule.
How the Four Weeks Fit Together
Before the first week, take ten minutes to set up the month the way the packet expects it to run. The packet includes a 4-week December study plan, a daily literacy and math schedule, teacher notes, a two-level differentiation guide, pre-reader support, ways to use the pages, printing tips and a contents page. Read the plan once, then print one week at a time instead of the whole packet. A week of pages in a tray, sorted into a literacy pile and a math pile, is much easier to manage than a 66-page stack, and it keeps you from handing out a week-four page in week one by accident.
The daily rhythm is simple: one literacy activity and one math activity each day. In most kindergarten rooms that means about 15 minutes per subject, either as morning work, as centers, or as a small-group slot. The literacy strand moves through sight words, word families, CVC words, beginning and middle sounds, syllables and rhyme, with sentence building and read-and-draw pages later in the month. The math strand moves through counting to 10 and then to 20, ten frames, number neighbors, comparing numbers, addition and subtraction, and then patterns, measurement, graphing, time, shapes and story problems. Writing has its own thread, with a December word wall and four prompts spread across the month, and a gingerbread friend craft lands near the end as a reward for a month of work.
Two levels are the hinge of the whole plan. Level 1 is the gentler version, with fewer items, simpler words or smaller numbers. Level 2 asks for more: longer words, numbers to 20, two-step thinking. Give children the level that fits what they can do today, not the level you hope they will reach by Friday. You can move a child up a level mid-week without changing the theme, the routine or the table they sit at, which is the whole point. And the pre-reader support in the packet is there for children who are not yet sounding out words: they can color, match, sort by picture and talk about sounds with a partner while the rest of the class reads.
A note on pacing: December will interrupt you. A fire drill, a concert rehearsal, a half day you forgot about. The plan survives that because each week is a set of activities, not a chain where every day depends on the one before. If Tuesday disappears, do Tuesday's pages on Wednesday and drop the least essential one. The weeks below suggest an order, but the order is a guide, not a test.
Week 1: Lights, Letters and Counting to 10
Week one is about settling the routine before the holiday excitement peaks. Children are meeting the packet's look and feel for the first time: black and white pages, clear pictures, one job per page. Teach the routine itself in the first two days, and the rest of the month runs faster.
Start literacy with the color-by-sight-word pages and the find-and-tally sight word search. Both are low-demand ways to meet the month's sight words. On the color-by-word page, each word has its own color, so a child who cannot yet read the word can still match the shape of the letters to the key, and a child who can read it gets fast, repeated practice. Sit with the group for the first one and read each word aloud as you point to it. Say the word, spell it, say it again. Say, spell, say — repeat that pattern all month, because sight words are learned by seeing them many times.
The tally search works the same way. Children hunt for target words hidden among others and mark a tally each time they find one. It feels like a game, but it is really a counting-and-reading double: they have to recognize the word and keep a running total. Let children hunt in pairs, one reading while the other tallies, then swap roles the next day.
For math, week one stays inside 10. Roll-and-color pages, ten frames and count-and-write to 10 give children three different ways to meet the same numbers. Rolling a die and coloring that many lights on a string is a good opener because it is physical and a little bit lucky, which kindergarteners love. Ten frames are the quiet workhorse of the week: a full frame is 10, a frame with three empty boxes is 7, and children start to see numbers as parts of 10 instead of a long counting line. Count-and-write pages then ask them to count a set and write the numeral, which is where you find out who can count reliably and who still skips numbers in the middle of a set.
A common mistake in week one is counting too fast. A child rattles off numbers while pointing at objects that do not match, and arrives at the wrong total with total confidence. Slow the pointing down, not the child. Give them a cube or a counter to place on each object as they count it, so the hand and the voice stay together. For the child who counts the same object twice, a ten frame helps: each object goes in its own box, and an empty box means something was missed.
End the week with the December calendar page. Put it on the wall or in the child's folder and mark each day as it passes. Counting down to a holiday is motivating, and the calendar itself is a math tool: days of the week, numbers in order, how many days are left. It also gives the month a visible shape, which matters when December feels like one long excited blur.
Week 2: Word Families, CVC Words and Numbers to 20
Week two adds a little difficulty in both subjects, and it is the week where the two levels start to earn their keep. By now children know the routine, so you can spend your teaching time on the skills instead of the procedures.
In literacy, bring out the word family lights and the Letters to Santa CVC stamps. Word families are a gentle introduction to how words are built: change the first letter and the rest of the word stays the same. Stringing lights with word family endings gives children a picture for that idea. Read a family aloud together — at, cat, hat, mat — and let children hear how only the beginning changes. The CVC stamp pages ask children to listen for each sound in a three-letter word and write or stamp the letters in order. This is the hardest listening work of the month so far, and it is worth doing slowly. Say the word stretched out — c-a-t — and have children repeat it stretched out before they write anything. Children who rush to write usually write the first sound and guess the rest.
Add the rhyme time mittens and the beginning sounds gifts this week as well. Rhyming is listening work, not reading work, and the mitten pairs let children match words that sound alike at the end. Beginning sounds gifts work the other end of the word: look at the picture, say the word, listen for the first sound. If a child can say the word but cannot hear the first sound, play it as a game first. Say two words — sock and sun — and ask whether they start the same. Yes-or-no listening games build the ear faster than a worksheet alone.
Math in week two moves to 20. Count-and-write to 20, light up the numbers and stocking number neighbors are the core pages. Number neighbors — the number before and after — is the skill that surprises teachers. A child who can count to 20 forward may still freeze when you ask what comes after 14. That is normal. Counting forward is a memorized song; knowing the neighbor means understanding where a number sits. The stocking pages give that idea a picture: each stocking holds a number, and children fill in the neighbors on either side. Practice it aloud as a call and response before the page: "What comes after 12?" and "What comes before 12?" A number line on the wall helps, and children should be allowed to look at it. Using a tool is not cheating; it is how they learn to trust the number line.
Compare numbers arrives this week too. Two sets, or two numerals, and the question of which is more. Children who count well sometimes still guess here, because comparing asks them to hold two quantities in mind at once. Use cubes. Build both numbers, put them side by side, and let the taller tower answer the question before the page asks it. The page then becomes a record of something they already figured out with their hands.
Kindergarten December Activities Packet is built for this kind of week: the same Christmas pictures, the same daily rhythm, but the numbers are bigger and the words are longer, so children feel the month moving forward instead of repeating itself.
Week 3: Sentences, Addition and the Gingerbread Craft
Week three is the fullest week of the month, and it is also the week where reading and writing start to join up. If the first two weeks were about sounds and numbers, this week is about using them.
Literacy turns to sentences. Build-a-sentence pages ask children to cut out words and glue them in order to make a sentence, and read-and-draw pages ask them to read a sentence and draw what it says. Both are checks on understanding that a single-word page cannot give you. A child can memorize a sight word without understanding a sentence, but they cannot draw the right picture from a sentence they did not understand. When a child's drawing does not match the sentence, read it together again slowly and ask them to point to each word as you read. Often the drawing is wrong because one word was skipped, not because the child cannot read at all.
This is also the week for the real-or-nonsense sort and the clap-the-syllables sort. The nonsense sort asks children to decide whether a word is a real word or a made-up one, which sounds silly and is actually a serious phonics check: it shows whether a child is reading the letters or guessing from the picture. The syllable sort asks them to clap the beats in a word and sort by the number of claps. Clapping is the teaching tool here. Before the page, clap out the names of children in the class. One clap for Max, two for Sophie, three for Alexander. Children love hearing their own names in the game, and the skill transfers to the page right away.
Math in week three is addition and subtraction with a holiday twist. Cookie addition and melting snowballs subtraction are the headline pages, with a color-by-sum mystery gift as a change of pace. Addition in kindergarten should stay concrete for as long as possible. Put real counters on the table, or draw the cookies, and count all of them together before writing the sum. The most common error at this stage is the child who counts the first group, counts the second group, and then writes the second group's count as the answer, forgetting to combine them. A ten frame or a simple number line helps, but the clearest fix is language: "We have three cookies and two more cookies. How many cookies altogether?" The word altogether is the instruction, and children need to hear it many times.
Subtraction is harder, and the melting snowballs give it a picture that makes sense. Start with a number, take some away, count what is left. Act it out first with cubes on a tray: five snowballs, two melt, how many are left? The page then records what their hands already know.
Midweek, make the gingerbread friend craft. It comes with a craft pieces page and a glue-and-write page, so the craft is also a writing task: children build their gingerbread friend, then write about it. Do the craft in one sitting if you can, and keep it joyful. December is short on joyful afternoons, and a craft that children take home is worth more than another worksheet. Display a few in the hallway if you have the wall space. The December Superstar certificate can go to children at the end of this week or the next, for steady effort rather than perfect pages.
Week 4: Patterns, Measuring, Time and Writing It Down
The last week before the break is the hardest week to teach, because attention is at its thinnest and the schedule is at its fullest. Keep the pages short, keep the routine familiar, and let the writing prompts do the heavy lifting. Children who will not sit for a new math skill will often write a whole page about the best gift they ever got.
Math in week four widens out: holiday patterns, measuring with cubes, count and graph, marshmallow tallies, ten and some more, telling time, shape trees and holiday story problems. You do not need to teach all of these as new lessons. Patterns, for example, are something most kindergarteners have met before, so the holiday pattern pages can run as independent work. Measuring with cubes is a good hands-on center: choose a holiday object, line up cubes beside it, count the cubes. The number means something because the child built it. Tallying with marshmallows works the same way: each picture gets a tally mark, and the marks get counted in fives. If you do not have marshmallows, use counters and draw the marks. The idea is the same.
Telling time at this level means the hour, usually with a clock face and a clear picture. Keep it to o'clock times and tie it to the day: "We eat lunch at 12 o'clock. We go home at 3 o'clock." Story problems are the week's best math teaching, because they ask children to read or hear a small story and decide what to do with the numbers. Read each problem aloud, act it out with cubes if needed, and ask the question in plain words before anyone writes a number. A child who can add 4 and 3 on a bare page but freezes on a story problem is not bad at math; they are still learning to translate words into numbers, and that translation is the skill the page is teaching.
Writing takes the lead this week. The December word wall should be up by now, full of the month's words: gingerbread, stocking, snow, cocoa, penguin, holiday, gift, reindeer. Four prompts are included: The Best Gift, If I Were a Reindeer, Winter Fun and a holiday letter. Spread them across the week, one per day, and give each one a short talk first. Before writing, ask children to tell a partner what they will write. Talking first is the single best support for young writers, because a child who has said the sentence can usually write the first few words of it. For children who struggle to get started, let them draw first and then label the drawing. A labeled picture is writing, and it counts.
The holiday letter is a natural final piece. A letter has a greeting, a few sentences and a closing, and children can write to anyone: a family member, a classmate, or a favorite character from the month. Keep the expectations modest. Two or three sentences with a capital at the start and a period at the end is a fine kindergarten letter, and the word wall is there so children can spell the holiday words without asking you every thirty seconds.
Close the month with the coloring pages — penguin pals, cozy cocoa, and merry and bright — as a calm Friday activity, and hand out the December Superstar certificates for steady effort.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much time does each day take?
About 15 minutes for literacy and 15 for math, as morning work, centers or a small-group slot.
What if a child cannot read the words yet?
Start on Level 1 and use the pre-reader support: matching, coloring, sorting by picture and talking about sounds with a partner.
How do the two levels work?
Both levels cover the same skill and theme. Level 1 uses fewer items, simpler words or smaller numbers, and Level 2 asks for more.
Can I use it for homeschool?
Yes. The Kindergarten December Activities Packet gives a homeschool day its shape with its daily schedule and 4-week plan, and the pages need no preparation beyond printing.
What happens if we miss a day?
Move that day's pages to the next day and drop the least essential one. Each week is a set of activities, not a chain where every day depends on the last.
What do I need besides the packet?
Crayons or pencils, scissors and glue, plus dice and cubes for math. Answer keys and a December Superstar certificate are included.
