Free Christmas Writing Prompts for Kids in Kindergarten
Download free Christmas writing prompts for kids in kindergarten. Encourage your students to write with these Christmas themed vocabulary cards and make story-writing fun and engaging this festive season.
It's that time of the year again— the holiday season! Your classroom is decorated with tinsel, fairy lights, and all things merry. The contagious excitement of the kids has you using every teaching trick in your arsenal to keep your students on task and learning.
While Christmas brings heaps of excitement in the classroom, it doesn't mean the learning has to stop. You can use the holiday buzz to enhance your classroom activities.
In this blog post, I will share some free Christmas writing prompts for kids in kindergarten. They are perfect for keeping those excited young minds engaged this Christmas season.
What Are Writing Prompts?
Before we get into my freebies, let's quickly review what writing prompts are.
Simply put, a writing prompt is an invitation to write. It can be a statement, a question, a sentence starter or an image. Writing prompts will inspire your students to write.
They are a great way to prompt thinking and will help students organise and articulate their thoughts. Writing prompts are essential classroom tools, especially for early learners who may need that extra nudge to put pencil to paper.
Why Christmas Writing Prompts Are Perfect for Keeping Students On Task
Christmas in the classroom is always special. It's certainly exciting when all the red and green makes its appearance.
My kids get sooo excited! Santa does that to a child!
I get excited too - that holiday break gets me excited! 😉
All the excitement and change in routines doesn't mean the learning needs to come to an end though.
You can use all that Christmas excitement to encourage your students to demonstrate the writing skills they have learned this year at school.
I love using Christmas writing prompts to keep my students focused and on-task in the last few weeks of school. They are perfect for early finishers or to fill those little time spots between end-of-year requirements like Christmas concert rehearsals.
3 Types of Christmas Writing Prompts You Can Use
You can use a few different types of writing prompts in kindergarten and grade one.
Narrative Writing Prompts
These types of prompts encourage storytelling. They are great for developing creative writing skills. Think along the lines of
What would you do if you met Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?
Tell me about the worst Christmas ever.
Write a short story about how you met Santa's elves.
Write a Christmas story about gingerbread men that come to life.
What adventures could you go on if you spent a whole day with your best friend at Santa's workshop?
Narrative prompts are great for small-world play. Add the prompt to a setup with a few little Christmas characters and props; your little ones will naturally create narratives they can write about later.
Descriptive Writing Prompts
These types of writing prompts focus on details and descriptions. Some examples of descriptive prompts are:
Describe the best Christmas present ever.
Describe your favourite Christmas smell.
Tell me about the most delicious food to eat on Christmas morning.
What does Mrs. Claus look like?
Make a list of words to describe Christmas day.
I find descriptive prompts are great learning prompts for the art area or makerspace. Add one of these prompts to your art area so your students can use their art work to inspire some later writing.
Informational Writing Prompts
These writing prompts are fact-based and can be something like:
Explain how your family celebrates Christmas.
What are your family traditions?
What do you need for the best Christmas dinner?
How do you make hot chocolate?
Write a list of things you would like to do in the holidays.
Informational prompts are useful for procedural writing tasks, retells, persuasive writing and factual explanations on specific topics or events.
Christmas prompts can improve your writing lessons by sparking creativity and providing a structured starting point for young writers.
I like using prompts that include vocabulary banks too. When you give young students on-topic vocabulary that they can use in their writing, they
Become More Confident: Having a list of words readily available can boost their confidence in writing sentences.
Enhance Their Vocabulary: They get exposed to new words and expand their vocabulary.
Write More Coherently: With specific words at hand, their narratives or descriptions become more clear and on-topic.
Engage Deeper with the Topic: Using related vocabulary helps kids to delve deeper into the theme or subject of the prompt.
Develop Research Skills: Students learn the importance of having resources and references when they use informative writing prompts. This is a foundational skill for future academic tasks.
The Best Way to Use Writing Prompts in the Early Years Classroom
A quick tip: provide some scaffolding. Start off with a group discussion to brainstorm ideas before asking your kids to write independently. This makes the writing task less daunting and more collaborative.
We will very often draw a picture first. This helps to put the anxious writer’s mind at ease. It also helps children to organise their thoughts and focus on the topic.
Many writing prompts can also double up as drawing prompts. Your non-writers can still participate.
It's so easy to differentiate and cater to the entire class. For those little ones who might not yet be writing fluently, get them to illustrate their interpretations of the prompt. We all know how important it is that every student is engaged and included in all classroom activities!
Writing prompts make perfect additions to your investigation writing area too. For an easy-to-set-up Christmas Writing learning provocation, add
some festive-themed writing paper
a couple of Christmas decorations
some enticing new Christmas pencils
printed Christmas-themed writing prompts
I like to use writing prompts as a tabletop activity in the mornings. Writing is a nice calming activity that helps children settle into the school day. Add a few printed writing prompts to a table with some writing tools and paper, and your students will be good to go.
The Power of Christmas Vocabulary Cards as Writing Prompts
I’m not a huge fan of traditional writing prompts like story starters in the early years classroom. I much prefer using vocabulary cards because they give young students so much more than just a story title or sentence starter.
Vocabulary cards are so versatile. They can be used:
to create a Christmas word wall.
in explicit teaching writing and spelling lessons.
at writing centres.
for free writing time.
as part of a Christmas-themed investigation area.
Vocabulary cards, word walls and topic mats are great additions to any writing center or learning area. They boost oral language skills and teach your kids new words.
I have found these types of resources encourage discussions. When your students use vocabulary cards, they will talk about their ideas and also have an open-ended starting point for their writing.
Christmas writing prompts are excellent for stimulating independent work. They make great creative writing prompts and can also be used to write personal narratives and informational texts.
Try using vocabulary cards as story starters next time you have a writing lesson. They give children's imaginations a nudge and help them explore different scenarios. Writing prompts help students to get creative.
My FREE Printable Christmas Writing Prompts
Ready to get your students writing?
Click the link below to download a set of free printable Christmas writing prompts from my resource library. They're designed to channel all the Christmas excitement into some productive writing practice.
Each prompt includes an engaging photo your students can relate to. There’s also Christmas topic vocabulary to help your kids produce a piece of writing they will be proud of.
Take the worry out of your writing lessons for the month of December and download my free pack of Christmas writing prompts.👇
You can grab the pdf file HERE in my FREE resource library.
My set contains 16 Christmas-themed Illustrated Writing Prompt cards covering these fun topics:
Christmas tree
Angel
Santa Claus
Wreath
Presents
Reindeer
Rudolf
Holidays
Elf
North Pole
Food
Christmas cards
Decorations
Carols
Christmas lights
Stocking
Set Up an Easy Christmas Writing Activity Center
These Christmas writing prompts make setting up a Christmas writing activity center or investigation area easy peasy.
At this time of year, when you’re packing up the classroom, the last thing you want is a big, complicated investigation area setup.
Just add these prompts to a table along with:
festive-themed writing paper
some writing tools
a Christmas text
and a couple of Christmas decorations
How easy is that!!
If you like the idea of quick and easy Christmas-themed investigation areas, you will want to check out my blog post: Christmas Maths Activities for Kindergarten. It has 7 Christmas-themed math investigation area ideas for you.
They are highly engaging and super easy to set up.
The Christmas math activities in this blog post are sure to keep your students engaged and learning in all the excitement of your end-of-year celebrations.
No need to worry this year (and every year in the future) about keeping your students focused and learning because my Christmas-themed math activities will keep your kids on task and learning right up until the Christmas holidays.
More Christmas Classroom Resources to Save You Time and Keep Your Students Learning
While you’re at it, why not check out my done-for-you Christmas-themed classroom resources? They are all tried and tested, engaging and easy to prep and set up. Take a load off this Christmas and treat yourself HERE.
So, there you have it! Christmas is not just about the red and green – or that naughty elf on the shelf!
It is a golden opportunity to inspire some productive writing and the perfect opportunity for your students to show off all they have learned this year.
Don’t forget to download your free Christmas writing prompts👇
If you liked this blog post on my Free Christmas Writing Prompts for Kids in Kindergarten, other teachers might too. When you share my blog posts and resources, it really does help me to help other teachers. Spread some Christmas cheer and click the sharing link below 👇