A Quick Christmas Activity to Fill the Time

It is that time of year to come up with a quick Christmas activity to fill the time before the winter break in the classroom or the art room that is fun. That time before the Christmas holiday is difficult. Because there are many factors that we can list. But there is one factor that requires planning ahead. I do not want to start a project that the students will forget about during their short time away. A Quick Christmas activity that fill the time before winter break are very handy.

Decorate a Tree

Amazingly, I tend to think things up in the spur of hours before a class arrives sometimes. I wonder if other art teachers or creative people can relate? An idea just comes to you and it is great. You may not have fully thought it out but you are going to jump right in and see where it takes you.

That is how this quick Christmas activity came about to fill some time with second grade. I cut out some tree tracers within about 15 minutes from scrap tag board. I knew students would complete the prior weeks assignment early this day and I needed to fill about 20-30 minutes of time and as mentioned I did not want to start a new project before they went on holiday break.

So they all traced their trees. Afterward, I called on students to tell us what we should draw on the tree to decorate it. Of course they said ornaments. Therefore, I had to define the perimeters with examples. Let’s decorate it with funny things and everyday things like different bugs, animals, tools, food, things in the sky on land, in the water, and other small objects. This time we started with a star. And to make the drawing more fun, we increased the number of objects per idea. We started with one star and progressed with two of something else. Then three of another and so forth.

Eventually we got to ten different things and as we progressed students started to relate the activity to the song of The Twelve Days of Christmas, which I did not seen coming, because I had just thought of the activity a few hours before they arrived.

Credit to

Now I do want to give credit to a book that I have for my daughter that is titled Merry Christmas Mouse! by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond. Whenever I have read that book, I kept thinking it would be fun to illustrate my own tree or have children do it. Finally after several years, it came to be. It was a success, because even though our class was over, the students wanted to color and add more things to their trees.

More Activities that may be of interest:

2 Easy Christmas Art Lessons