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.
Staying with trees I do like Building 3D Fractals from Think Maths.
Also on Think Maths, try Festive Fold and Cut, and Wrapping Presents Mathematically.
For another fractal activity, try a Fractal Cutout Card from Fractal Foundation; cut out a 3-dimensional fractal and turn it into a pop-up card. Templates and worksheets are provided.
You can also check the fractivities, with support from the Albert I. Pierce Foundation, these fractivities are aligned with US common core standards in mathematics and English language arts.
From The Conversation, The 12 days of Pascal’s triangular Christmas.
Try this logic puzzle from Sarah Carter – Reindeer Logic Puzzle and note her collection of Christmas resources.
Jonathan Hall has Simultaneous Grids (select Festive) with a festive flavour!
From Pixi Maths, her festive activities include Christmath quizzes from Numeracy through to A level – Maths questions with some Christmas questions also.
I have used many of Tom Bennison’s resources, including his Christmas Calculated Colouring for A Level students – these make perfect Christmas activities for older students.
You can access calculated colouring resources from previous years also and have a look at his other Christmas themed resources.
For the last few years, I have made Christmas Cards for students using the wonderful Chalkdust resources, Matthew Scroggs has designed the 2021 Chalkdust card. You can use an interactive or pdf version. The 2021 card contains 14 puzzles. See also the cards from 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017.
Lucy created this Maths GCSE Christmas Relay which she describes as “16 GCSE style Higher/Foundation crossover questions with a seasonal twist. Great for an end-of-term relay race or just as extra practice questions to do as revision.
For younger students, try Gareth Metcalfe’s Christmas Challenges. These are four sequences of problem-solving tasks, all with build-ups/extensions. For each sequence there is a video and pdf files of the various tasks.
From STEM Learning, we have Christmas – 23, a collection of Christmas-themed resources for STEM subjects including Maths.
One of the STEM resources is Christmas Puzzles; The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) published four seasonal puzzles from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney, published in 1917, in their Secondary magazine. I have mentioned Henry Ernest Dudeney’s – Amusements in Mathematics before (see Free Books), the Kindle edition is free. Several categories of puzzles are available. A search on Christmas returned 23 puzzles, solutions are all provided.
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 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.
On TES we have a complete set of relays from Chris Smith; my classes have enjoyed his Valentine and Summer relays, try his Christmas relay to complete this term. You can find more excellent resources from Chris on TES.
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. Perhaps a Murder Mystery; from Whieldon on TES, a well-received worksheet, this mini murder mystery has 6 characters who have been buying presents. The character who spent the least murdered the character who spent the most, students must use the clues to identify the murderer and the victim.
Oxford University Press have some free resources including some Christmas-themed problems (AO2 and AO3) 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.
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.
From Amanda Austin on Dr Austin Maths, the activity “Plotting Quadratic Graphs Create-a-Picture” is a great task for plotting quadratic graphs.
MEI 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!
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 colouring resources and coordinate pictures; for your KS4 students, how about a little Christmas Factorising?
- Mostly for younger children, Top Marks have put their favourite Christmas Activities together.
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! The 24 video links are just below the video.
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 2023 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!