What Are Some Fun Math and Literacy Challenges for the Holidays?

Dec 10

By Julie Diamond, Founder & CEO Diamond Teachers Group

The holiday season is a perfect time to engage your child in learning without it feeling like homework. Between decorating, baking, and holiday traditions, there are countless opportunities to sneak in math and literacy practice while having fun. From patterns and geometry to writing and budgeting, here are practical, creative ways to make learning festive and hands-on at home.

Math in Holiday Activities

1. Ornament Patterns and Sequencing

When decorating your tree, involve your child in creating repeating patterns with ornaments. For example: “Let’s put two red ornaments, then one gold, then two red again.” Ask them to extend the pattern or design their own. This activity strengthens early math skills like sequencing, pattern recognition, and critical thinking.

2. Geometry in Dreidels and Decorations

Use holiday crafts to explore shapes and geometry. Challenge your child to create their own dreidel, cut out snowflakes, or design paper chains. Ask questions such as:

“How many triangles make up your snowflake?”
“Can you make your dreidel sides equal in size?”
“Which shapes fit together to make a star?”

These questions encourage spatial reasoning, symmetry, and measurement skills.

3. Holiday Bake-Off: Fractions and Measurement

Baking cookies or a holiday cake is a delicious way to practice fractions, multiplication, and volume. Ask your child to:

Double a recipe to make more cookies.
Halve a recipe for a smaller batch.
Read the recipe and use the proper tools to measure ingredients carefully and compare amounts.

You can also turn it into a mini math challenge: “If we have 24 cookies and 6 people, how many does each person get?” or ask your child how to adjust the recipe that makes 12 cookies to instead make 18.

4. Budgeting for a Family Meal

Include your child in planning your holiday meal budget. Provide flyers or online grocery prices and ask them to:

Estimate the total cost.
Compare prices for different brands.
Calculate discounts or sales tax.

Older kids can practice more advanced concepts like percentages, ratios, and unit pricing, while younger kids can practice addition and subtraction.

5. Holiday Scavenger Hunts

Create a scavenger hunt with math twists:

“Find 3 items with right angles.”
“Bring me something that weighs about 1 kilogram.”
“Collect 12 items and divide them into 3 equal groups.”

This encourages estimation, counting, and categorization while keeping the activity playful.

Literacy in Holiday Fun

1. Writing Holiday Cards

Invite your child to write the family’s holiday cards. They can practice:

Handwriting and spelling.
Sentence structure: “Wishing you a joyful holiday and a happy New Year!”
Personalizing messages with thoughtful notes.

You can also challenge them to write cards to friends, neighbours, or teachers to make literacy meaningful and socially engaging.

2. Storytelling with Holiday Prompts

Create story starters for a festive “write-a-story” activity:

“An elf who accidentally swapped presents…”
“A snowman who wanted to visit the beach…”
“Our family’s holiday adventure this year…”

Set a timer for 5–10 minutes to encourage quick thinking, fluency, and creativity. Older children can revise and edit their stories, practicing grammar and punctuation.

3. Holiday Word Games

Play I-spy or scavenger hunt games with words:

“I spy something that rhymes with tree.”
“Find something with three syllables.”
“Look for items that start with the letter H.”

Or challenge them to create their own holiday family game to play at the upcoming get together.

Combining Math and Literacy

Some activities naturally combine math and literacy for even more learning:

1. Holiday Escape Rooms

Design a simple escape room with clues that require reading comprehension and math skills to solve. For example:

Decode a written riddle to find the next clue.
Solve a math problem to “unlock” the next step.

This is highly engaging and works for kids of all ages. Then you can challenge them to make their own escape room for you to solve.

2. Gingerbread Village Blueprints

Have your child design a gingerbread village or holiday scene:

Draw a blueprint, labeling each part.
Measure walls, doors, and windows.
Calculate area or perimeter for candy placement.
Write a short story about the family who lives in the village. You can take this a step further and get their story published into a physical book using Storybird or Storyjumper.

This project integrates geometry, measurement, creativity, and literacy all at once.

Make Learning Fun

The key to holiday learning is keeping it playful and relevant. By turning ornaments, baking, cards, and decorations into mini math and literacy challenges, you can strengthen your child’s skills without taking away from the joy of the season. Even small daily challenges such as measuring ingredients, writing one card, or creating a pattern can build confidence, independence, and a love of learning.

With a little creativity, the holiday season can become a rich learning playground that supports your child academically and emotionally while creating wonderful family memories.

Julie Diamond