Christmas Activities for Kids: 12 Printable Games and Puzzles

The weeks before Christmas are full of waiting — for the school holidays, for Christmas Eve, for the morning itself. A few printable activities make the waiting more fun, keep a classroom party running smoothly and give everyone something to do while the cookies bake. Here are twelve Christmas activities for kids, each with a free page you can print today.

In short: play Christmas bingo with the whole family or class, hand out tree and snowman mazes and dot-to-dots for younger children, word searches and crosswords for older ones, and build an advent puzzle calendar with one page for each day. Everything here is in our free Christmas printables — 106 pages with answers, no sign-up.

1. Christmas bingo for the whole room

Bingo is the easiest game for a group of mixed ages. The Christmas bingo cards are 30 different 5 × 5 cards with Christmas words — elf, stocking, cookie, candle, sleigh — and a caller sheet. Let children take turns as the caller, and use buttons, wrapped sweets or paper snowflakes as markers.

2. Christmas tree and snowman mazes

Ten mazes inside a Christmas tree, snowman, gift, bell and star, with solutions at the back. They suit ages 6 and up and are a good quiet activity for early finishers. More are in the printable mazes.

3. Christmas dot-to-dot

Connect the dots to draw a Christmas tree, snowman, gift, bell or star, then color the picture in. These suit ages 4 to 7 and come with answer pages. For counting practice at other levels, see the printable dot-to-dot pages.

4. Large print Christmas word searches

Ten themes — Christmas Eve, decorations, Christmas baking, gifts and toys, Santa's workshop, reindeer, winter weather, the nativity, carols and winter clothes — in large print, so younger readers and grandparents can join in. Find them under Christmas word search.

5. Christmas crosswords

Ten clue crosswords with simple everyday clues ("winter figure with a carrot nose", "month of the winter holidays") for ages 9 and up and families working together. They are in the Christmas crosswords set.

6. An advent puzzle calendar

Print 24 pages — mazes, word searches, dot-to-dots and coloring — number them 1 to 24 and put one in an envelope or a paper bag for each day of December. Children open one a day; the last few can be the hardest mazes. The all-in-one Christmas PDF has more than enough puzzle pages for the whole month.

7. Christmas coloring with mandalas

The Christmas mandalas are designs inside stars, bells, snowflakes and round ornaments. They have more detail than a simple coloring page, so they suit older children, teens and adults. Colored pencils work better than markers on printer paper.

8. Carol code-breaking for older kids

Each Christmas cryptogram hides a line from a classic carol or story — "Deck the halls with boughs of holly", "Jingle bells, jingle bells", "God bless us, every one!" — with every letter swapped for another. Kids crack the code, then sing or read the line aloud.

9. Make a class word search

Ask each child for one Christmas word — a favourite food, a tradition, a present they hope for — and turn the list into a puzzle with the free word search maker. Print a copy for everyone; children love finding their own word.

10. Puzzle relay

Split the group into teams. Each team solves a maze, then a word search, then a dot-to-dot, and runs to the front to collect the next page. The first team to finish all three wins. It works indoors on a rainy afternoon and needs nothing but paper and pencils.

11. A quiet hour on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is long for small children. Save a few pages — a dot-to-dot, a coloring page, an easy maze — for the evening, with a cup of cocoa and the lights on the tree. It is a calm way to wind down before bed.

12. Thank-you puzzles after Christmas

After the presents, hand out the winter word searches and mazes for the days between Christmas and New Year. Our winter printables carry on the theme, and New Year's Eve activities for kids has ideas for the last night of the year.

Which activities suit which age?

For year-round activities sorted by age, see printable activities for kids.

Printing tips

• Print on US Letter at actual size, or on A4 with "Fit" selected.
• Answer pages are at the back of each PDF — print them separately for the grown-ups.
• Card stock or sheet protectors let you reuse bingo cards with dry-erase markers.
• Print a few extra mazes: someone always wants another one.

Where to get the printables

Everything in this article is in the free Christmas printables: ten large print word searches, ten crosswords, 30 bingo cards with a caller sheet, ten mazes, ten dot-to-dot pictures, ten mandala coloring pages and ten carol cryptograms — 106 pages with answers. Download one set or everything in one PDF; no account or email is needed.