By Heather Sanders.
Though my kids have always truly enjoyed their Christmas Break, there is such a thing as too much “down” time. When the kids were younger, after the first few days of Christmas Break, I learned to have some activities or suggestions on hand to keep the kids’ hands and minds active.
To keep what I affectionately called the kids’ “crazies” in check, I would print off a few coloring/activity pages or click on one of the many holiday games I bookmarked. It also helped to have additional color pages and crafts ready when we were away from home and visiting family, since according to my two youngest kids, “The adults spend a bunch of time talking about boring stuff.”
Now that the kids are older they are capable of easily entertaining themselves, but still enjoy the occasional color sheet or two, mixing and baking cookies, making crafts, and my two younger kids enjoy playing the wonderfully goofy Christmas online computer games.
I’ve compiled the following websites because they each have several Christmas activities, from downloadable coloring pages and crafts, to online computer games and recipes.
FREE Christmas Online Activities for Kids!
Apples4theteacher.com – This site has a slew of Christmas ideas, coloring pages, printables, and Christmas-themed computer games. Games like Christmas Bounce and Christmas Presents are a lot more challenging than you might initially think. There are also a few games perfectly tailored for young children, like Christmas Sudoku, Decorate a Tree, and Dreams New Year Puzzle (which functions just like Bejeweled, but with Christmas images). I would like to point out that short video ads are integrated previous to many of the computer games.
FREE-N-FUN Christmas – Created by Oriental Trading, this website offers 20 high quality, printable Christmas Coloring Pages, as well as Christmas Recipes and Santa Letters.
Hello Kitty Forever – If you have a child who adores Hello Kitty, there are 7 Hello Kitty coloring pages as well as a few Hello Kitty activity pages, including a “Santa’s Helper Maze”, an “Unscramble the Words”, and more coloring pages. This blogger also offers a downloadable Hello Kitty Santa Cubee Tutorial that can be printed out, cut-up and put together within minutes.
HelloKids.com – The Christmas for Kids section has Christmas coloring pages, easy Christmas-related drawing tutorials (How to draw Santa Claus, How to draw a Christmas candle, How to draw a Christmas sleigh), and kids can even download and color their own Christmas gift labels to help with the tagging of gifts.
Kaboose – This site has a number of Christmas crafts, activities, recipes, holiday decoration ideas, as well as Christmas music and lyrics and Cookie Recipes. Be aware that the sidebar ads run non-stop as soon as you click through to each page, so pause them or turn down the volume when perusing the website.
PrimaryGames.com – This site has quite a few different Christmas computer games, like Deep Freeze where the object is to “Freeze your enemies with your water gun and stop the bad guys from ruining Christmas” and Where’s Frosty, a game where “Frosty is missing and Santa needs your help to find him.”
The Kidz Page – Literally 5 pages of Kids’ Christmas and Winter Holiday computer games. Try the Online Christmas Crossword, race to light the Christmas tree or slide the right configuration of pieces together in the Sliding Snow Penguins Puzzle.
If you have a few favorite sites with FREE online kids’ activities, please add them in the comments below!
OMSH/Heather L. Sanders is “Momma” to three kids, Emelie, Meredith and Kenny. When not homeschooling, or writing about homeschooling, Heather is busy designing websites or going on dates with her husband Jeff, the love of her life.
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