See Christmas Resources for the always updated Christmas collection.
Transum Christmas Tree Trim – Level 3
From the brilliant Transum Mathematics try the numerous Christmas activities. Try Christmas Tree Lights for example, or for a great exercise in being systematic try Christmas Tree Trim with 8 levels; students must use the given lights to create different Christmas Trees.
This Advent Calendar collection has problems for every age from young Primary age children to A Level (UK age 16-18).
The Advent Calendar Collection, of course, include
the Nrich calendars. For more Christmas Nrich resources try Christmas Chocolates Christmas Trees Sums of Powers – A festive Story and Elf Suits – which looks good for thinking about systematic listing strategies!
From Teachitmaths, create a masterpiece! Mistletoe & lines; the description reads ‘Practise your graph drawing skills with a Christmassy theme! Plot the given points to draw a Christmas tree, then add your own lines of tinsel, giving the equation of each one.’ The pdf resource is free, you just need to register with the site. Further Christmas activities are available.
For more plotting, try this ATM open resource, Santa Plotting. Plot the points given and note the challenge questions at the end.
From earlier years some personal TES Christmas favourites include Christmas Countdown (which although designed for daily use I have also used as an end of term activity) and Santa’s Reindeer (logic and number properties) both of which I have successfully used in class. Try this Twelve days of Christmas algebra activity or try Christmas shading graphical inequalities. This Operation Christmas Tree Excel resource makes a rather nice starter, it is possible to customise the tree.
On TES we have a complete set of relays from Chris Smith; my classes have enjoyed his Valentine and Summer relays, I think we’ll use the Christmas relay to complete this term! You can find more excellent resources from Chris on TES and follow him on Twitter here.
As with all these relays from Chris – all the answers are provided – brilliant!
These GCSE Maths Christmas Puzzles from chuckieirish look good as do the Christmas Puzzles from ryansmailes. Also from ryansnailes, try a Christmas Maths Activities Booklet.
Oxford University Press have some great free resources including some Christmas themed problems for your GCSE students.
Another set of Higher (Geometry) problems is here. I like their festive Venn Diagrams, they would make a nice introduction / reminder on Venn diagrams for younger students.
From MEI, the November / December 2017 M4 Magazine includes an excellent collection of 10 puzzles and challenges for your students. Full teacher notes and solutions are included and the problems are ready for you to project for your classes.
MEI’s M4 Magazine archives (GCSE resources are indexed by topic) include many teaching resources, note also MEI’s Newsletters.
Here’s a Christmas tree on the Desmos Graphing Calculator site. Note this is simply a collection of lines and circles, as you can see from the syntax it is very easy to restrict x or y values.
How about a Desmos present to review equations of lines? This Christmas present graph makes a good starter.
I also created a version where the lines are all black which means I can easily change the colour of just one of the items to clearly display each.
For more on getting creative with Desmos, see Graph Art on Mathematics for Students.
@MEIMaths shared The Christmas Tree Bauble Calculator🎄
Dr Matthew Lettington of Cardiff University has helped Admiral create an online tool to calculate how many baubles and fairy lights are needed for the perfect Christmas tree. Answer four questions to find out how many baubles and the length of fairy lights you need!
Mostly for younger children, Top Marks have put their favourite Christmas Activities together.
If you are creating any resources yourself you might want to install some Christmas fonts! (shown here: christmas lights, christmas tree and kingthings christmas)
…and a few more Christmas resources:
- Maths Thinking Holiday Games on Colleen King’s Math Playground
- Primary Resources.co.uk – a collection of seasonal activities for younger students
- Emaths has a Christmas collection including Christmas coloring resources and coordinate pictures, for your KS4 students, how about a little Christmas Factorising?
We could do the annual calculation and work out how many gifts are received over the 12 days of Christmas. Murray Bourne has all the answers and more on squareCircleZ or have a look at this YouTube video.
On the subject of videos, try a video advent calendar from Numberphile!
Using the excellent MacTutor History of Mathematics archive we learn that Christmas Day 1642 was celebrated on Newton’s birthday in England.
click on the image …
Christmas 2019 WolframAlpha count and other information you probably are not too worried about for Christmas Day!
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year. Thank you for reading and for all the various comments. Have a wonderful and well-deserved break when we get to the holidays!