Christmas Holiday Countdown

Here's out last countdown activity - some fun doodling with numbers! Try our suggestions, or make up your own. And don't forget to share pictures of your artworks with us!

Get ready for some seasonal counting fun! How many of each of the symbols can you find? For a bonus activity, colour them all in.

>> Download I-Spy Christmas Activity Sheet

Today we’re making seasonal decorations with a mathematical twist – using binary code! Download our chart and create ornaments with festive words written in binary code. Binary code is a way to write numbers, letters and symbols using only 0 and 1. It is used in computer coding.

>> Download Binary Code Chart

A calming art puzzle activity for the weekend. Cut out circles of different sizes from white paper, then cut some in to halves, quarters and eighths. Use the circle fractions to lay out snowflake patterns. Remember, snowflakes are symmetrical!

Four friends are planning a party for New Year's Eve. Each of them is bring one decoration and one item of party food. Can you work out who is bringing what? There’s two difficulty levels to choose from. In Level 2 you’ll also need to work out what colour party hat each friend is wearing.

>> Download Logic Puzzle (Level 1)
>> Download Logic Puzzle (Level 2)

There’s two ways to play our Decorate-a-Tree game. In Best of 5, the player with the most points after five rounds wins. In First to 20, it’s the player to reach 20 points first.

For an extra challenge, try to reach 20 points exactly on your last throw – so if e.g. you have 17 points, you need to roll a 3 to win. If you roll a higher number, you’ll need to try again in the next round.

>> Download Tree Game Template

Today we're sending you on a secret holiday mission! But the message for your mission has been encrypted. Use the keyword cipher to work out what it is.

>> Download Keyword Cipher Activity Sheet

A tessellation is an arrangement of shapes fitting together in a repeating pattern without gaps or overlapping. Download our template and fit together the tessellating trees to make one giant tree! The template includes three sizes of tree to choose from. This is a great activity to do with a group or class, or at a family gathering.

Tip: It’s easier to colour the trees in first and then cut them out.

>> Download Tessellating Trees Template

It's the perfect time of year to cuddle down with a good book. With plenty of counting books for kids to choose from, it's also a great opportunity to include some maths in your seasonal story time.

What are your favourite seasonal books to read at this time of year?

In this fun Christmas art activity, you need to create pictures just by colouring in squares - no extra diagonal or rounded lines allowed! Try our suggestions or create your own!

Bonus suggestion: If you are into cross stitch, you could also use these doodles as cross stitch patterns, with each square equalling one stitch.

In our festive Sudoku for kids, cut out the stars and place them on the grid so that you have one star of each colour in every row, column and 2x2 or 3x2 block. There are two different levels of difficulty to chose from.

>> Download Festive Sudoku (Level 1)

>> Download Festive Sudoku (Level 2)

Happy (belated) Christmas Jumper Day! If, like us, you didn’t get the memo that Christmas Jumper Day was a day early this year, you can have some festive jumper fun with today’s activity. Download our free activity sheet and design your own jumper. Can you give it a mathematical twist? How about adding some shapes, repeating patterns, tessellation or symmetry!

>> Download Festive Jumper Template

Today you'll need to get your thinking caps on again - fill the squares on the grid with the correct colours, with the help of the coordinates, to reveal our festive mystery picture!

>> Download Mystery Picture Activity Sheet

Get stuck in to some maths themed seasonal crafts with our Sierpinski Christmas tree! The Sierpinski triangle is a pattern of equilateral triangles that repeats again and again at different scales. This kind of pattern is called a 'fractal'. Our tree is a large pyramid made of smaller pyramids. Since a fractal can repeat endlessly, you can keep adding layers to build a tree as large as you want!

>> Download tetrahedron template

>> Download Sierpinski tree tutorial

In this collaborative drawing challenge, one person describes whilst the other draws. It’s not as easy as it sounds! You can use only shapes and directional words in your description. Why not have several people drawing at once and compare your pictures at the end – did you all draw the same thing?

In this simple counting activity with a seasonal twist, early learners can match the buttons to the gingerbread shapes to count from 1 to 5. The download also includes a bigger version of the template for younger children, so that bigger buttons or equivalent can be used.

>> Download Gingerbread Template

Note: Small parts can pose a choking hazard. Please supervise young children when doing this activity.

There are a multitude of maths skills involved in baking - from weighing, measuring and counting, to fractions, conversions, telling the time and more! Put your maths skills to the test as you bake our delicious sugar cookies! (gluten free, nut free, vegetarian)

>> Download Recipe Card

Building with Lego is a great opportunity to incorporate a little maths in to your children's play time. How many bricks do they need of each colour? What size of bricks - 2x2 blocks, or 2x4? While they're having fun, they're already learning maths without even realising it.

Use your code cracking skills to work out the punchlines to five Christmas cracker jokes that have been encrypted as secret messages.

You can also have a go at encrypting your own secret messages, using our Cryptography resource developed by the Open University, with five different ciphers to choose from.

>> Download Codebreaker Challenge

>> Download Cryptography Resource

This open ended drawing game encourages number recognition and counting, and celebrates the symmetry of snowflakes. Discuss why the die has only even numbers, and where to place your symbols on the grid to keep your snowflake symmetrical

>> Download Roll-a-Snowflake Instructions

Welcome to our Countdown to the Christmas Holidays! Every day from 1 to 20 December we will be sharing a new activity - you can look forward to a mix of puzzles, games, arts and crafts, and more! We have given an indication of which activities are best suited for which age, but feel to check them all out and pick the ones you will enjoy most.

You can find the downloads for ALL our activities via the link below.