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December Preschool Themes

December is a wonderful time of year with so many events to look forward to during this special season. It’s also a great opportunity to have exciting things to do for the kids in the classroom. You’ll find a ton of fun and independent learning tools with our December Preschool Themes.

It’s time to grab these free December Preschool Themes including December Printables, Worksheets, Activities and more! If you are thinking about December Preschool Lessons, don’t forget to see our free winter activities below!

Our winter printables and activities will thrill the kids with cold-weather topics like Christmas, Candy Canes, Winter, and Gingerbread! We’ve also got December Fine Motor Skill Packet with 60+ thematic, hands-on ideas perfect for your precious preschoolers!

Gingerbread Preschool Printables

Gingerbread is so yummy and such much fun at the same time! While a Gingerbread Playdough Recipe adds flavor to your day, try a Gingerbread Math game for added Gingerbread activities!

Christmas Preschool Printables

Christmas is the best part of the December season! With our Christmas Preschool Themes choices of Christmas Tree Mats, Christmas Preschool Printables, 12 Days of Christmas Worksheets, and a ton more to try!

Winter Preschool Printables

You’ll find our WInter Preschool Printables pretty chilly with our Artic Animals, snowflakes, snowmen and hot cocoa to warm up your cold nose after diving into our Winter Printable Worksheets!

Candy Cane Preschool Printables

Candy Canes are not only yummy, they also have significant meaning — J for Jesus! You’ll find a Candy Cane Playdough Recipe, printables, worksheets, minibooks and more!

December Preschool Themes

Here are some more exciting December Preschool Theme ideas you can use for your homeschool or classroom. This winter season is a wonderful reminder how much fun there is even when it’s cold outside!

January Preschool Themes

Free January Preschool Themes, Printables, Worksheets and Activities! Are you ready to plan your January Preschool Lessons, but you’re not quite sure where to start? We’ve created some amazing winter printables and activities that are perfect for your January preschool themes like Arctic Animals, Snowflakes, Snowmen, and even Hot Cocoa. Be sure to check out our interactive January Preschool Fine Motor Pack for more!

Arctic Animals Preschool Printables

These free arctic animal printables are just right for your winter preschool lessons. Children can learn all about the amazing polar animals that thrive in the world’s arctic deserts with our free hands-on preschool activities.

Snowflake Preschool Printables

Free snowflake preschool printables for learning all about amazing winter design! Children can marvel at snowflakes, learn about ice and weather patterns and help decorate your classroom with snowy art projects. 

January Fine Motor Activity Pack
60 thematic, hands-on activities to build fine motor control skills in January! These thematic activity pages are perfect for your January learning centers. Great for early finishers, take-home resources, or as a tutoring binder you can bring on the go!

Snowman Preschool Printables

A collection of free printable snowman worksheets and activity pages. Our free snowman tracing worksheets are great for preschoolers who are learning to identify shapes by sight and by name. Each page features a silly shaped snowman for reference.

Hot Cocoa Preschool Printables & Activities

Free printable hot cocoa activities for preschool. Your students will LOVE to practice their counting and fine motor skills with our hot cocoa math mats! Great for early math skills. Better yet, make some of our Hot Cocoa Play Dough for an extra sensory experience!

Calendar Preschool Printables

January is the perfect time of the year to get started learning about the calendar! Our free calendar preschool printables will help your preschool students color and design their own calendar.

January Preschool Themes:

Don’t you just love to start off a new year?!!! New beginnings, a fresh start, and a clean slate of possibilities. As we move forward into the new month of January, try some of these preschool themes in your classroom!

Sparkly Winter Mint Play Dough

Winter Spearmint Playdough

January is the perfect time to dive into winter unit studies. Learning about snow, snowflakes, ice, and all that entails from animal behavior to winter fun! The dough is soft and has a bright fresh scent that your kids will love ( I enjoy digging into it a bit myself!). Keep your dough in the refrigerator when not in use to keep it fresh longer and also give them a little cold feeling to their “snowy” playdough for at least the first few minutes!

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups of water
  • ½ cup of salt
  • 1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar
  • 2 Tablespoons oil- vegetable or coconut
  • Spearmint essential oil or spearmint extract
  • Glitter

Directions:

Place flour, water, oil, salt, and cream of tartar together all at once in a large saucepan.

Turn heat to just over medium and stir the mixture frequently with a wooden spoon.

Keep stirring until it begins to clump together on the spoon and looks like unrisen bread dough.

Remove from heat then stir in glitter and essential oil or extract whatever you are using.

Flip out onto the counter or another smooth surface. Allow it to cool until it is comfortable to the touch.

Once cooled enough to handle add more glitter if you desire and knead for 2 or 3 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

While you’ve got out all your tools, why not whip up a batch of our Candy Cane Playdough? Or maybe even our Gingerbread Playdough!

Add any tools you have on hand and watch the winter fun unfold. Craft sticks, rollers, snowflake cookie cutters, winter animals, or anything else you can think of.

This simple recipe is so beautifully open-ended that there are many ways you can incorporate it into any winter theme.

My favorite is to incorporate a living book to read aloud while they play, this Over and Under The Snow by Kate Messner tells the animals are doing throughout winter above and below the snow you see.

You can make snowflake patterns by cutting lightly into the dough with a craft stick.

Create a winter wonderland for these arctic animals to hide in.

Make snowballs and work on those fine motor muscles!

Free Arctic Animal Printables & Games

Add buttons, cloves, sticks, and beads to create snowmen and more! Pair this hands-on activity with our Free Arctic Animal Preschool Printables! We’ve got some fantastic coloring pages, crafts, games and more.

Tracing Snowman Shapes Activity

With winter around the corner, you’ll want to stock your preschool classroom with fun, thematic activities for your students. We’ve got hundreds of free winter preschool printables available on our website. From arctic animals to Christmas activities and games, to nutcrackers, snowflakes and now snowmen!

Snowman Tracing Worksheets

But these aren’t just any snowmen! These snowmen come in all sorts of shapes and sizes! Our free snowman tracing worksheets are great for preschoolers who are learning to identify shapes by sight and by name. Each page features a silly shaped snowman for reference.

You can place these pages inside a page protector and have students write with a dry erase marker. That way they can be reused again and again simply by wiping off the marker. Alternatively, you can create your own shape manipulatives using pipe-cleaners and have children place the shapes on the correct spot.

Free Winter Preschool Printables

If you are really feeling festive, try using a handful of mini-marshmallows, red hots, peppermints, mini-poms or even playdough. Encourage children to place the manipulatives around the outline of the shape. You could even count how many of each object was needed to complete the shape and compare sizes.

Tracing Snowman Worksheets

If your students are headed home for winter break, this would be a fun take home activity you could send with them! You could print these pages smaller than a full sheet and make them a little booklet for students to complete over Christmas Break. For extra fun, have them turn each shape on the page into their own snowman by adding eyes, nose, arms, a scarf, and other features. The possibilities are endless with this fun set of snowman tracing pages!

Tracing Snowman Shapes Title Page

If you are making a little take-home booklet for your students, use this free cover page!

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Diamond Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a diamond! Students trace all of the diamonds then practice writing the word below.

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Rectangle Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a rectangle! Students trace all of the rectangles then practice writing the word below.

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Square Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a square! Students trace all of the squares then practice writing the word below.

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Circle Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a circle! Students trace all of the circles then practice writing the word below.

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Star Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a star! Students trace all of the stars then practice writing the word below.

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Oval Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of an oval! Students trace all of the ovals then practice writing the word below.

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Triangle Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a triangle! Students trace all of the triangles then practice writing the word below.

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Heart Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a heart! Students trace all of the hearts then practice writing the word below.

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Hexagon Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of a hexagon! Students trace all of the hexagons then practice writing the word below.

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Octagon Tracing Worksheet

This snowman is in the shape of an octagon! Students trace all of the octagons then practice writing the word below.

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Christmas Playdough Mats

Free Christmas Playdough Mats

There is just something so fun about homeschooling during the holiday season! With all the fun Christmas activities, games, and crafts, the classroom is always filled with delicious smells and festive projects. One of my favorite activities is to work in some hands-on learning with Christmas playdough mats. Today, I’ve got a free set of Christmas Cookie Play Dough Mats that you can use with scented playdough (gingerbread playdough recipe here), mini-erasers, candy canes, or even cookies.

Gingerbread Man Play Dough Mat

The first way you can use these free Christmas Playdough Mats is with Gingerbread Play Dough and a Gingerbread Man cookie cutter. This set of cookie cutters provides you with multiple sizes for even more learning fun! Your students will LOVE to roll and cut out their own gingerbread cookies. Best of all, the play dough will smell just like gingerbread for some added sensory fun!

Christmas Cookie Play Dough Mats

Another way to use these playdough mats is with Christmas themed erasers! This set includes sturdy and adorable erasers featuring a snowman, present, penguin, Christmas tree, stocking, Santa, snowflake, and of course a Gingerbread Man. This set comes with 100 erasers so we’ll be using them over and over with our Christmas Activities. They are also great for counting, addition, subtraction, and learning about patterns.

Christmas Cookie

If you’d rather not deal with the playdough mess, or don’t have erasers at hand, you can still use this cookie mat by cutting out your own little gingerbread men from brown construction paper. I just cut these by hand, and they ended up a little too large for the tray. So, I made a set of printable Gingerbread Men Templates for your kiddos to decorate and cut-out. You can use these as a template and cut them from construction paper, or have children decorate and color them in. See below for printing instructions.

Gingerbread Cookie Playdough Mats

Print these mats on cardstock and place inside a page protector for reuse.

PRINT

Gingerbread Man Template

This sheet will print 12 gingerbread men for your children to decorate. Suggested embellishments are provided as well as fun decorating examples. Use these with the cookie tray for counting activities.

PRINT