Three Christmas Games to Play with Your Class or at Home

Here are three fun Christmas games that your kids or students will love every time.

They can be used with primary/elementary, secondary or adult ESL learners.

You could use these at the start or end of a lesson, as a brain break, as a 5-minute filler or at the end of the day.

I like to start with an individual-focused game to get the energy going, and then move to a group game that has everyone laughing together, and finally finish with a calming whole-class game.

1. The paper plate game

You will need:

• Each child/student will need a paper plate and a marker to draw with.

This is a great listening activity where you read out a set of instructions and students draw on their paper plates. The only thing is, their paper plates are on top of their heads so they can't see!

This activity has lots of prepositions in it too, so it's great for language arts.

How to play:

Everyone puts their paper plate on top of their head and draws each instruction as you read it. When you've read all the instructions, they take the paper plate down and have a laugh at where everything ended up.

Here's a possible script you could read out:

1. Draw a tree in the middle of the plate.
2. Draw a star at the top of the tree.
3. Draw four ornaments on the tree.
4. Draw three presents at the bottom of the tree.
5. Draw a fireplace on the left of the tree.
6. Draw a stocking hanging on the mantlepiece.

You can give out points for things such as 1 point if the star is at the top of the tree, 1 point if the ornaments are on the tree, 1 point if the stocking isn't in the fireplace. Or you can just let them have a laugh about how silly it looks.

2. The candy cane game

You will need:

• A pack of cards or Uno cards
• 4 matching cards per child/student (e.g., for a group of four children/students you could use a set of all the 5s, all the 6s, all the 7s, and all the 8s).
• Enough candy canes for each person.

If you know how to play the game "spoons", then you'll find this game easy to pick up as it is a Christmas version which uses candy canes instead of spoons.

Set up:

• Put children/students into groups of four or five.
• Give each group their sets of cards which have been shuffled. A group of four will have 16 cards.
• Give each group enough candy canes for each child minus one, so there is one less candy cane than you need to make it fair.
• Put the candy canes in the middle of the group.

How to play:

The goal is to get four cards the same (i.e.. the same number) and then as soon as you get four the same, grab a candy cane from the middle.

Deal out the cards evenly.

Everyone picks up their hand and chooses one card to discard to the player on their left. Ideally, everyone needs to pass at the same time. Continue picking up the card from the right and passing to the left.

As soon as you get four cards the same, grab a candy cane from the middle.

If you see someone else grab a candy cane, you grab one as well. Until their are no candy canes left and one person misses out.

Everyone then puts the candy canes back in the middle, the cards get reshuffled, and the game starts again.

It takes at least the first round for people to catch on how to play. Play a few games of this until you feel it's time to move on, then on the final round everyone who got a candy cane keeps it and you go around giving out candy canes to the ones that missed out.

If you're playing this with ESL learners, I recommend breaking the game into steps, so the first round there are no candy canes and students just get used to picking up and passing around. Then introduce the candy canes for the next level of fun.

3. Hide the Santa

You will need:

• A Santa figurine, or a similar Christmas object. Something the size of an ornament is perfect.

How to play:

One person hides the Santa in the room while the others wait outside. The Santa must always be visible in some way, so it can't be hidden inside a desk or in a bag.

When the Santa is hidden, they call everyone in.

Everyone comes inside and looks for the Santa.

When they see it, they don't say anything, they just quietly go and sit at their desk.

This continues until everyone is sitting down apart from the last person to find it.

This person becomes the next person to hide the Santa.

It's a fun game that is great for calming down and quietening after the previous two games.

Do you have any favorite Christmas games that are great for the classroom? Leave your ideas in the comments below.