70 Creative Ideas for Celebrating Christmas in Math Class

Over the years, I’ve shared quite a few Christmas ideas in my Monday Must Reads posts. This year, I’ve taken the time to go through these posts and compile these holiday-themed ideas in a single post. Hopefully this will make accessing these amazing ideas that other math teachers have shared on twitter even easier to implement in your own classroom.

I’ve also written a few holiday themed posts of my own in years past. Be sure to check them out as well. Hopefully all of these ideas will given you plenty of inspiration to keep your students busy during these last few weeks of the semester (or year depending on your hemisphere).

I hope you enjoy reading through these math-y (and a few science related) holiday ideas for your classroom.

Reindeer Logic Puzzle

Icosahedron Oranment Balls

Decorate the Tree Puzzle

Checkered Ornament Puzzle

Vocabulary Christmas Ornament Project

And, now for the amazing ideas from previous Monday Must Read posts.

I first learned to play Nim as a sixth grader in math class. I’ve always played with physical objects like stones, pencils, popsicle sticks, etc. So, I was super intrigued to see nim played on paper. Thanks to Donna Buckley for the idea! Plus, they look like cute little Christmas trees!

Check out this Christmas-themed parabola activity from Math with P. Nik.

These triangular Christmas trees from Mark Ekstrom are too awesome not to share.

Mrs. Tangel shows how to use factor trees in a festive manner. Keep this in mind for next Christmas!

Mrs. Allan shares a Christmas gift idea that could also work well as an end-of-year gift for students in your math club.

Here’s a lovely real-world math problem for Christmas decorating from Ms. Kulcsar.

Luke shares an awesome prime based Christmas puzzle

Kerri Homan inspires with a math-themed Christmas craft. It’s never too early to start thinking about how you will celebrate this year!

I love this Christmas themed mathematics display that James created with his students!

I love these ornaments that Mrs. Yakubov made for all of her students for Christmas.

Here’s another display that caught my eye on Twitter from Park Junior School. I would like to extend this project to give students a task to draw Christmas ornaments based on the circumference, area, radius, or diameter.

I love Sarah‘s project where she challenged her students to come up with a strategy to
determine if Zebra Cakes or Christmas Tree Cakes are better. How fun is this?!?

This Elf puzzle from Maths@ KPS looks fun!

Here are some others from KPS Maths that also caught my eye.

Want to join the magic of snowflakes and math (specifically statistics)? Check out this awesomeness from Anna Fergusson. Each snowflake is created from one one of the letters in “happy holidays.” Anna even crated a free web app that we can all use to make our own secret statistical snowflakes from a word or phrase of our own choosing!

Want to experience some more statistical awesomeness from Anna Fergusson? Check out her Teaching Statistics is Awesome blog! I especially like this task from Anna’s twitter account. What story would your students come up with? Check out one person’s Christmas-y story for this graph.

dailySTEM shares a fun Christmas puzzler!

Emma Bell has created a bunch of image based Christmas challenges for you to use
with your students. Check them all out here on her blog.

Sue de Pomerai offers up an interesting Fermi estimation problem with a Christmas twist.

Ed Southall shares a winter themed geometric puzzle.

Need something to keep your brain sharp over Christmas Break? Check out this lovely crossnumber puzzle from the UK Mathematics Trust.

Regolo Bizzi shares a gorgeous Christmas tree tesselation. A great Christmas challenge for next year would be to have your students create their own holiday-themed tesselations!

Christine Redemske combines centroids for balancing triangles with the Christmas season to produce some beautiful results.

Looking for a science-y way to celebrate the Christmas season? Shelby Roth uses Christmas slime to teach about conservation of mass.

From Maths Ed: a brilliant description of why correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Simon Quinn offers up a Christmas puzzler. Can you figure out how many presents Father Christmas has in his bag?

Ms Tang inspires with her science-themed Christmas tree. I will put up a tree in my classroom one year soon!

If I was the judge, Allison Kipping‘s door would definitely win the door decorating contest!

Luke Walsh recognizes that a holiday gift bag is actually a brilliant Which One Doesn’t Belong (WODB) problem.

Iva Sallay shares instructions for making adorable origami Santa stars on her blog.

Amanda Atkinson shares a photo of a thoughtful gift she received. How cool would it be to have my students make these next year for all of the teachers in the building!

Elyssa Stoddard‘s students produced some beautiful projects using their compasses!

If you are not following Jae Ess on Twitter, you need to fix that NOW. You are missing awesome ideas and activities like this Buddy the Elf project that can be used for practicing either slope or the pythagorean theorem. This is teacher creativity at its best. Be sure to check out Jae’s blog here.

Tina Cardone shares an idea for combining vocabulary practice with snowflakes for some festive fun in math class.

Looking for a great Christmas review idea? McLaren History shares an idea that produces a cute room decoration. Have students answer questions on green paper and use the answers to build a tree. I love that this task can be used for ANY subject!

Need more proof that Hannah Oldham‘s twitter account is a must-follow? Check out this project where students predicted the spread of a virus and created an ornament to represent
how many days they each survived.

Chris Smith‘s maths newsletter is a must-read. If you haven’t subscribed yet, what are you
waiting for? (Subscribe for free by emailing aap03102@gmail.com!) You are missing interesting puzzles each week like this Christmas-themed puzzle.

Liz Gosky makes me wish that I still taught chemistry. These copper plated ornaments are gorgeous!

Kim Spek is getting her calculus students in the Christmas spirit with a volume of revolution ornament creation activity.

DCDSB Math‘s Twitter account is a must-see if you are looking for Christmas related math
tasks for your classroom! Check out a few of my favorites:

Here’s the same photo but with a different question:

Mr. Bayle shares a fun, festive activity. Can you count how many times the words Jingle,
Bell, and Rock show up in the song Jingle Bell Rock?

Dave shares some fun Christmas activities which practice transformations. These are adorable
and make me wish I was teaching geometry so I could use them. He has
graciously uploaded the files on TES to be downloaded for free!

Ms. Kuney shares the results of what looks to be a fun holiday-themed systems of equations project.

Ilona Vashchyshyn shares a winter-themed WODB problem.

Halcyon Foster shares a holiday-themed brain teaser. I always find these kinds of puzzles to
be a bit tricky! Be sure to check out the other Mathvent postings here!

Malke Rosenfeld inspires with some beautiful mathematical art. I’m thinking this would
make a perfect Christmas ornament project for every math class! Check
out this blog post for more information.

Connie Schaef shares some awesome ornaments her chemistry students created. Each ornament
represents a different element. These are absolute gorgeous!

Usually, I think I made the right decision in choosing to teach high school over middle school. But every once in a while, Casey makes me doubt my decision by posting her sweet students’ creations.

Toni Madison coined an awesome term I look forward to using in the future: “craftivity.”
Aren’t these fraction/decimal/percent Christmas trees adorable?!?

Toni Madison also shares an inspiring Christmas-themed project that could be used in pretty much
any math class: vocab ornaments. Be sure to check out Toni’s blog post with more details about this project and other awesome Christmas ideas for the math classroom!

As we start to gear up for Christmas, I’m inspired by this advent calendar of daily math challenges from Gemma K.

Mr Nik shares a winter-themed puzzle.

DCDSB shares a creative ChristMASS problem.

Paul Jorgens shares a beautiful, Christmas-themed Desmos Marbleslides challenge.

Clemens Science inspires with three beautiful Christmas trees full of biology-themed ornaments. Beautiful!

Mark Kaercher adds the twist of cutting to the Quarter the Cross task. I could totally see myself laminating these and making them into Christmas ornaments!

I love this snowflake WODB task from NOMA math!

I absolutely love this photo that Hedge shared of some Christmas trig artwork that she spotted in a school she was at.

Malia Heimbach wins the award for having the best neighbor in the world. I love the idea of giving ornaments for a prize.

Check out her students’ desmos gingerbread houses.

Have more Christmas ideas? Share them in the comments!