Inside: Templates for a Santa letter and Christmas countdown
Christmas in Grade 1 is so much fun. Yes, it gets a little crazy sometimes, but it’s all good:)
Leading up to Christmas, some of the most exciting parts for first graders are the Christmas countdowns and writing their letters to Santa. Especially if Santa writes back, as he does in Canada.
Our Classroom Advent Calendar
A few years ago I quilted this advent calendar for my class. Each December I fill the trains with chocolates and every day leading up to the Christmas break a different child gets to pull a chocolate out of one of the trains.
As you can imagine, this is a VERY popular activity!
Letters to Santa
Every year we write our letters to Santa in the first few days of December.
In the past I’ve walked the children to the “Village” to mail their letters. It’s a VERY exciting walk. My new school is a little further from the mailbox but I’m hoping with a couple of parent volunteers to help keep the kids “in line”, we’ll be able to manage.
Here’s the letter template we’re using. I got the clip art from My Cute Graphics.
We write the letters together (with me on the document camera) and spend a lot of time stretching out words, remembering spaces and talking about punctuation and upper case letters.
The empty box at the bottom is where I print the child’s full name and address so that Santa knows where to send his reply!
Here are a couple of cute letters so you can see them in their glory.
Christmas Countdown Calendar
We’re also starting our Santa countdown calendars.
This little Santa face was made by me.
The kids will print their own numbers from 1 to 25 in the circles.
This is great practice for them because most of them still have a couple of reversals.
As each day goes by we’ll put a cotton ball on the date. Nothing new here 🙂 but the kids love this!
RELATED: Christmas tree countdown template.
You can see what they look like below. You’ll notice the Santas look different. That’s because my earliest template, while super cute, was a low quality graphic I found on-line. So now I’m using a very crisp Santa template that I recently made.
DOWNLOAD: Christmas Countdown Calendar and Santa Letter
I have lots more Christmas posts and free stuff here!
Thanks for stopping by!
Walking to deliver letters to Santa sounds like so much fun! And I really like the poem sequencing. That's a great way to do it. Thanks for sharing. ChrissyFirst Grade Found Me
First graders always seem to be the most excited about Christmas and traditions. I love reading their letters to Santa. What authentic writing!TaraThe Math Maniac
When I read this, my first thought was \”Ahhh, I need to slow down. I need to teach +1 and +2 instead of addition facts to 20.\” Now that I think about it, it's quite crazy what I was doing. You are always bringing me down to earth Barb and helping the kids in my room. Thank you.Off to find out if we are 'allowed' to write letters to Santa!xo Kimberley
Saw those Power of Ten cards! Still love them!Sandi
I love kids' letters to Santa! They are always so cute. How exciting for them to get to walk them to the post office!LoriConversations in Literacy