Christmas Activities for Kids: Printable Pages for Busy Days

Christmas activities for kids printable: the short answer

The easiest way to get through December with kids is to keep a small stack of ready-to-print activities and match each one to the moment: a quiet puzzle page for the car or a Sunday afternoon, a family activity card for the evening, and a bigger project for the weekend. You do not need a craft closet, only a printer, pencils and a plan for which activity goes where.

• Quiet time (10 to 20 minutes): word search, maze, sudoku or secret code pages
• Wind-down time (15 minutes): drawing or story pages, tic-tac-toe, I spy
• Family time (30 to 60 minutes): one advent activity card a day, such as cocoa night or a lights tour
• Weekend project (1 to 2 hours): gingerbread houses, ornament making, a pajama party
• Always print the answer key last so kids can check their own work

What you need before you print

Most Christmas printables for kids work on plain paper, so the setup is small. Decide how many children are doing the pages at once and whether you want them to reuse a page. Puzzle pages work best printed once per child, while activity cards only need one copy for the whole family.

Check the age range before you commit. Pages that are too hard end in frustration after two minutes, and pages that are too easy get skipped. If you have two ages in the house, pick pages with an easy and a tricky version of the same puzzle so both children can work side by side.

• Printer paper in US Letter or A4, and cardstock if you want sturdy cards
• Pencils for puzzles and crayons or markers for drawing pages
• Scissors for cutting activity cards along the dashed lines
• A folder, envelope or jar so pages and cards stay together until needed
• A stapler if you want to turn the pages into a small activity book

Step by step: plan a busy December with printables

A simple plan keeps you from printing everything on December 1 and finding it all wadded up by the 10th. Release the activities in small batches and tie them to the days when you actually need them.

• Pick your two or three busy points. Think car trips to relatives, the evening before a concert, rainy weekends or the last school days before break. Those are the moments puzzles pay for themselves.
• Print one activity book or a handful of puzzle pages for each child and put them in a folder labeled for that child. Keep the answer pages out of the folder.
• Print a set of family activity cards and choose one for each day of December. Put heavier ones such as baking or building on weekends and keep the weeknight cards short, like cocoa night or a dance party.
• Leave a few blank spots. A card you write yourself, such as a visit to grandma or a school concert, keeps the plan honest.
• Review the plan every Sunday. Swap a card that does not fit the week for a quick puzzle page and move the bigger activity to the weekend.

Ideas by age and situation

The best activity depends less on the holiday than on who is doing it and where. Here is how the same printable stack works across a few common situations.

• Ages 4 to 6: use drawing pages, I spy, tic-tac-toe and the easy maze with a grown-up nearby. Read word searches aloud and let them circle the letters.
• Ages 6 to 10: this is the sweet spot for word searches, mazes, sudoku, word scrambles and secret code messages. Offer the tricky version once they finish the easy one.
• Road trips: clip pages to a clipboard with a pencil on a string. Tic-tac-toe boards and the I spy page need no flat surface.
• Classroom or class party: print the easy and tricky pages as stations and let children rotate. Keep the answer keys for the teacher.
• Family evenings: pull one advent activity card from a jar and let the youngest child pick.
• Christmas Eve: a quiet writing or drawing page keeps children busy while you finish wrapping.

Mistakes to avoid

Printing too much at once is the most common one. A stack of 40 pages looks like homework, while three pages in a folder feels like a treat. Print in batches, and hold back a few pages as a surprise for a day when the mood slips.

The second mistake is skipping the answer key. Children who can check their own word search or sudoku stay independent longer, which is the whole point of a quiet activity. The third is ignoring ink and paper use: print the puzzle pages in black and white, and save color for the cards and drawing pages.

Printable option: Christmas Activity Pages for Kids

If you want one ready-to-print stack for quiet time, the Christmas Activity Pages for Kids printable is a 16-page PDF written for ages 6 to 10, with easier pages that work for younger children with a little help. Page 1 is a start-here guide, and the puzzles are listed with their level so you can choose by difficulty.

Inside you will find an easy word search with 8 words and a tricky one with 14, an easy and a tricky maze, a Christmas word scramble with 12 words, 3 secret code messages, 4 easy 4x4 sudoku puzzles and 2 tricky 6x6 ones, an I spy and count page, a make-as-many-words-as-you-can page, 9 tic-tac-toe boards, a design-your-own-ornaments page and a My Christmas Story writing page. Answer keys are on the last two pages, and you can print as many copies as you need for your family or classroom. See the activity pages on Etsy.

Add a daily family activity with advent cards

Puzzle pages keep children busy alone, but a lot of December is about doing things together. The Christmas Advent Activity Cards printable is a 12-page PDF with 25 family activity cards, one for each day from December 1 to Christmas Day. Each card holds one simple, low-cost activity, such as trimming the tree, cocoa night, a lights tour, building a blanket fort or a secret act of kindness.

The PDF also has 11 blank cards to write your own, card backs for double-sided printing, number tags from 1 to 25, a Christmas countdown tracker, 50 bonus activity ideas and an advent planner. Tuck the cards into envelopes, a jar, the pockets of an advent calendar or hang them on the tree. The blank cards, tracker and planner have typing fields, so open the file in a PDF app that supports form fields or print and write by hand. Get the advent activity cards on Etsy, or browse more Christmas and New Year printables.

More Christmas ideas for kids

When you are ready to plan a bigger day, these guides pair well with the printables above:

• Kids Christmas printables hub for activity pages, games and crafts in one place
• Christmas pajama party ideas for kids for a two-hour party plan
• Gingerbread house contest ideas for a build-and-judge weekend project
• Left Right Christmas game for a story game that works for mixed ages