Holiday Literacy Activities

Since many tutors and students won't be meeting regularly over the Holiday season, we have put together several literacy activity ideas for students to work on on their own if they have some free time. This way, students have the opportunity to continue developing their reading and writing skills even over a long break. Tying these activities into Christmas makes them all the more enjoyable and relevant to students.

So here is our list of activity ideas, which we will be updating periodically as we come up with more of them. Please feel free to post comments sharing your own ideas for holiday literacy activities with other tutors and students:

• Have your student write in a journal each day throughout the holidays, describing Christmas traditions and activities in which they are participating.
• Give your student a holiday book to read over the break.
  
• Give students a list of holiday vocabulary words and have them look one up each day.
• Have your student watch a holiday movie or play and then write a review about it as if they were a critic.
• Ask your student to look up Christmas jokes to share with you and have them be able to tell you what the jokes mean.
• Find Christmas story starters for your student so they can write a few Christmas stories of their own. http://www.abcteach.com/free/s/storystarters_christmas.pdf has some good story starters.
• Give your student a Christmas Crossword Puzzle or Word Search to do over the Holidays. http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-word.html is one website with such games.
• Students can make Christmas cards for their family and friends.
• Have your student look up information about a particular holiday tradition to learn more about it.
  
• Students can write letters to Santa (and practice addressing an envelope).
• Create a Christmas Mad Lib for your student.

Some websites with additional Christmas activities:
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/holiday.html
http://www.kented.org.uk/NGFL/festivals/xmas.htm#act

There are many more possible Christmas activities. Please post a comment with your ideas!