Festive EYFS Christmas Activities at Tiny Toez Nursery

Make Christmas cards

Instead of going and buying some of your Christmas cards at the shop or online, try making it an activity you can do with your children or that other nurseries can do with them during the day.

Making your own Christmas card requires only materials that you’re highly likely to have at home, such as card, paper, felt, colouring in pens or pencils and if you do want to jazz things up, you can buy inexpensive glitter and sticky shapes to decorate them with.

At the nursery to keep things clean, we put down sheets of paper so that the children can paint and draw as freely as they want, making the clean up after very quick and easy.

Christmas paper chains

Using a paper cutter to save time, roughly cut some A4 paper into strips (the wider the strip, the easier it will be for the child to link together). Decorate each paper strip using various art materials, stickers and then link them together. The children can help hang them around the nursery with their friends.

Top tip: Double-sided sticky tape on one end of the paper strips can speed up the drying process when linking the strips together.

Letters to Santa

Writing a letter to Santa is a lovely way to encourage children to share their ideas, feelings and wishes at Christmas time. Set up a little “post office” area with paper, envelopes and crayons/pencils, and let children choose whether they want to draw pictures, attempt letter shapes, or dictate their message for an adult to write down. This is also really important for children learning how to write and also how to communicate their thoughts.

To make it extra magical, you could add a post box (a decorated shoebox works perfectly) and do a “daily collection” together. This supports communication and language, early writing skills, and personal, social and emotional development as children talk about what matters to them and practise taking turns while sharing ideas.

Christmas music

Start playing a selection of festive songs and invite children to move in different ways, march like toy soldiers, twirl like snowflakes, tiptoe like reindeer, or freeze when the music stops. This is a fun way to develop gross motor skills, listening and attention, and self-regulation as children follow simple instructions, manage excitement, and enjoy being active together.

Snowy sensory tray

This is a fantastic activity that you can do at nursery or at home. Fill a shallow tray with “snow” made from cotton wool balls, shredded paper, or even oats, and add scoops, small cups, spoons and a few wintery items (safe baubles, toy animals). Children can pour, scoop, hide and find, and talk about what they can see and feel.

 Celebrating different Winter festivals

Create a calm, welcoming winter celebrations table that includes photos, storybooks, and simple, child-friendly items linked to different holidays that families may celebrate (for example Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, and Lunar New Year). Invite parents/carers to share what they celebrate at home (a photo, a short note, or a favourite tradition), and use this as a gentle talking point in small groups.

At Tiny Toez, Christmas is such a special time, full of sparkle, excitement and lots of little learning moments along the way. The best part is that festive fun doesn’t need to be expensive. With a few simple resources and plenty of imagination, children can explore, create, move, and communicate in ways that support their development across the EYFS.