December is here already!  I thought I would share some of the free resources I have made in the past for you to use with your students this month.  It’s always great to have some fun easy to make holiday activities to use with your students.  I will provide the links to all the free products at the end of the post for you to use and enjoy with your students!

These 2 sorts are great to use to work on size concepts and describing!  I created a Big/Small Present Sort and a Big/Small Christmas Cookie Sort.  Just print, laminate, and cut out all the piece for each sort and they are ready to use!  To learn more about how to use this activity with your students click on the link from last year’s blog – Big and Small Christmas Sorts

Big and Small Christmas Present Sort – Lots of different skills you can target during this sorting activity.  Not only does it help learn “big” and “small” size concept, you can include other descriptive concepts while describing the items.  You can also work on expressive language skills and have your students give each other directions on which present to find.

Big and Small Christmas Cookie Sort – I set up this sort the same way.  The difference is the cookies are shaped in different holiday related items so you can use it to build up some vocabulary skills.  There is a wreath, light, different gingerbread people, ornament, bell, Christmas trees, etc.  Don’t forget to pull out those AAC devices and have your students name the different cookie shapes on their device or describe the cookies on their device.  You can ask some simple “wh” questions about the cookies and your students can answer them verbally or on their devices.  For example, “what color is the tree?”  or “where do you hang the Christmas light?”

There are a couple different ways you can set up the activity.  If you want to be able to reuse this activity you can laminate all four counting pages.  The first two you can put hard Velcro in the empty boxes and soft Velcro on the back of the numbers so the students can match the number to the correct number of items.   You also could just have your students use dry erase markers on all the pages to write the number in the boxes.  This makes it simple and ready to use in a few minutes.

Another option is to create a file folder activity.  This is how I set up mine.  I glued the first two Christmas counting pages in a file folder and laminated the folder.  I put hard Velcro in all the boxes.  Then I attached soft Velco on the back of the cut out number pieces and attached them along the bottom of each page for storage.  Since I have other seasonal file folder activities it makes it easy to store and use again.  To learn more about how to use this activity with your students click the link – Christmas Counting

I have made these identification boards for lots of different themes.  I use this identification board to work with my students identifying holiday pictures and following directions.

For my lower functioning students I often fold the paper over so the student can only see one row a time.  Then we point to each picture in row 1 and I say each holiday item – “wreath, reindeer, present”.  If the student is verbal I have the student try to name the pictures after I say them.  If the student is not verbal I just model the words for the student.

Then I break the directions up in simple commands.  For example, “touch wreath” and after the student correctly identifies the wreath I provide the rest of the direction, “color green”.  I often only give the student a choice of 2 colors of crayons if we are still working on color concepts.  If the student does not know colors I just give student the correct color and model the color concept several time.

For my higher functioning students, I have the student name all the pictures on the board or receptively identify all the pictures as I say the word.  For example, while looking at all the pictures I say “find the present” or to make it even more challenging “find something you wrap”.  Then I give more complex directions such as “find the present and color it purple”.  I either have the students go row by row or I have the students work on looking at all 12 pictures.  Sometimes I even have my students take turns giving the directions to each other.  Then the students get to choice what to find and what color to color it.  They love doing that and it works great for students working on both expressive and pragmatic language skills.

Snowbear’s Christmas Countdown by Theresa Smythe is another great book I like to use around this time of the year.  The book has one sentence to describe what Snowbear does each day from December 1^st to the 25^th.  The book uses lots of different verbs and holiday vocabulary concepts which is perfect for our students.  I created some visuals and questions to pair with the book.

If you are interested in more details about this resource click the link from last year’s post – Snowbear’s Christmas Countdown 

“There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Bell” by Lucille Colandro is also perfect to use for this time of year.  This book is great to target holiday vocabulary terms and work on sequencing skills.  If you are interested in more details about how to use this activity with your students click the link – “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell”

Hope you can use some of these free Holiday Resources with your students.  Here are the links for these different activities.  Happy Holidays!!!

Big Small Christmas Sorts

Christmas Counting

Christmas Identification Board

Snowbear’s Christmas Countdown

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell