The holiday season is a magical time in any classroom, but it can be especially meaningful in a special education setting. Planning December activities in special education means blending festive fun with functional learning goals. Whether you're looking for winter-themed academic tasks tailored to IEP goals, holiday crafts for family gifts, or fun classroom games for the busy season, December offers endless opportunities to engage your students in creative, structured, and joyful ways.
Check out some of my favorite December activities:
ELA Ideas
- Read The Gingerbread Man. I love this version retold by Mary Sandel from the Fountas and Pinnell intervention collection because it is predictable for making picture-supported sentences and easy enough for my emerging readers to read the text.
- My favorite Christmas books are:
- Clifford’s Christmas by Norman Bridwell
- The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro
- In addition to using picture-supported sentence boards, I also have an old lady doll that I have students take turns feeding throughout the story. I just print an extra copy of the sentence board at a larger scale, laminate and cut out the pieces, and then pass them out to each of the students as the story starts. It is a great interactive activity and really builds joint attention and engagement during the read aloud!
- My favorite Holiday Traditions books are:
- Kevin’s Kwanzaa by Lisa Bullard
- The Night Before Hanukkah by Natasha Wing
Math Ideas
- One of my favorite math activity for the holidays is a tree decorating craft incorporating money. I print out tree outlines on green cardstock. Next, I gather decorations for the students to glue on their trees. Then, I give each student a buying menu so that they can purchase the decorations they want. I differentiated this activity three ways by having one buying menu with coin icons for matching the coin to the picture to make the purchase, another option with prices to work on single coin values, and finally an option with prices in multiples of 5 so students can count out nickels or easily use TouchMoney.
Cooking & Craft Ideas
- I love making special gifts with my students for their families. We always have so much fun creating, wrapping, and sending special cards home. This Santa handprint mason jar is one of my favorites!
- When celebrating Christmas, we love making Christmas Cookies. Some years I make them from scratch with the kids and other years when we are feeling rushed for time I will get the pre-cut cookies so we can focus on the best part... DECORATING!
- When celebrating Holiday Traditions like Kwanzaa and Hannukkah, we make sweet potato pie and marshmallow dreidels.
- For all of my favorite classroom visual recipes check out my Visual Recipes for the Whole Year on TPT.
Social Group Ideas
- Each year we have a small celebration in my classroom where my paraprofessionals and I give gifts to the students and the kids have fun opening and playing with their new toys. Then we have treats, play games, and dance to some holiday music. Then, my students join their homeroom general education classrooms for their parties as well.
Interested in these activities and more? Why not bundle and save!
