Seasonal and Holiday Activities for Preschoolers

These seasonal and holiday activities for preschoolers will help you as you plan for your preschool year! You’ll find a variety of holiday ideas, as well as seasonal activities the preschoolers will love.

Related: Preschool Themes

Preschoolers love celebrating holidays, don’t they? It might be because holidays bring different activities to the classroom, along with some special celebrations. Or it might be because the kids are responding to the adults around them getting into the seasonal and holiday spirit. Either way, I find children are very engaged around the holidays.

Below you’ll find a variety of holiday and seasonal activities for preschoolers. Many of them are things I’ve done in the classroom or at home. But some are ideas I’ve found elsewhere and just had to share with you. I’ve tried to include a variety of holidays, and I plan to add more when I can.

Please keep in mind that some might not suit your classroom, depending on where you teach. I suggest you take the ideas that work for you and your students and discard the rest. And feel free to leave me a comment if you have additional ideas and activities to share!

Holiday Activities for Preschoolers

This page is where you’ll find all of Fun-A-Day’s holiday activities, as well as some I’m itching to try from others. I’ll be updating when I have more ideas to share with you of course (so be sure to pin it or bookmark it).

It’s not an exhaustive list of holiday ideas, of course. I’ll be adding more content for you, of course, but I know I haven’t touched on each and every holiday. Feel free to chat with me about more ideas you might be looking for.

Click on the links below to be taken to activities for each of the linked holidays:

Which of those holiday activities for preschoolers are you most excited about trying in your classroom?

Even More Holiday Ideas for Kids

If you’re looking for even more seasonal holiday ideas, be sure to check out Fun-A-Day’s Pinterest boards! I update these boards as I come upon fun ideas and activities for the kiddos. Here are the holiday-themed boards:

• New Year’s
• Valentine’s Day
• St. Patrick’s Day
• Easter
• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Day
• July 4th
• Halloween
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas

Don’t forget to share some of YOUR favorite holiday activities! I am always looking for new ideas to try with the kids.

Holiday Lesson Plans for Preschool

Preschool Teacher 101 has a variety of done-for-you preschool teacher resources, including fully-developed preschool lesson plans based around holidays. The lesson plans include weekly lesson plans, detailed daily plans, book suggestions, whole group lessons, small group ideas, holiday activities for preschoolers to do during centers, and coordinating printables!

Click on the images below to get your own lesson plan packs (and scroll down the post for even more resources to check out):

Seasonal Activities for Preschoolers

Now that we’ve touched on holiday activities for preschoolers, I wanted to make sure you have some seasonal ideas too. Not all children celebrate all holidays. And I know that some of you might be constrained by school rules when it comes to holiday activities in the classroom.

Plus, it’s always fun to explore seasonally-themed activities with the children. Depending on where you live, they might be observing changes in the weather and the environment. Or they know seasons are changing because the adults in their lives are commenting on it.

Seasonal activities can help guide your students as they learn and explore the world around them. And it’s another chance to show the kids that seasons are different all over the world. The weather is very different in January when you compare the Northeastern United States and Australia, for example.

Below you’ll find activities that are seasonal without having a holiday focus. Click on the links below to be taken to each seasonal category. Just like with the holiday ideas, I’ll be updating these seasonal activities throughout the year.

You can find more seasonal activities for preschoolers on Pinterest, too:

• Winter
• Spring
• Summer
• Fall

Feel free to leave me some of YOUR favorite seasonal ideas for preschool. As I mentioned earlier, I’m always looking for new ideas to try and share.

Seasonal Lesson Plans for Preschool

Preschool Teacher 101 also has you covered when it comes to lesson plans for each season! Just like the holiday plans (and our non-seasonal lesson plans), these packs are fully-developed and already mapped out for you. Plus, they have printable plans, book ideas, and related printables to use alongside hands-on activities.

Click the images below to read more about each of the packs. (You can scroll to the bottom of this post for even more holiday and seasonal preschool resources!)

How to Incorporate Holiday Activities into Your Preschool Plans

Now, let’s chat a bit about how to use these seasonal and holiday ideas when planning. First, map out the general overview for the whole year. Pencil in the dates you’d like to incorporate the holiday activities and move on to planning out your preschool themes and projects.

Once you have the year generally mapped out, come back here and pick a few of your favorite seasonal and holiday activities for preschoolers. That’s right, I said “a few”. You don’t need to try and incorporate every single one of these ideas into just one year!

What I share here on Fun-A-Day are activities I’ve done with multiple classes of children, mostly with preschoolers and kindergartners. I definitely didn’t do every activity during just one school year.

Some classes will be more interested in different activities than others, and that’s okay. So leave a little wiggle room in your plans so you can adjust as you need to. For example, one year I had a class that was crazy about all things art. Another year, the children were much more interested in exploring engineering and building. So I change things up depending on the interests and personalities of each class. Honestly, that’s more fun for me too! What about you?

I also highly suggest integrating diverse holiday ideas when you can. This will give the children a view into other cultures and locations. It’s always interesting to see what holiday experiences children in different part of the world have.

Oh, and don’t feel like every single activity you do needs to be holiday or seasonally themed. It’s more than okay to incorporate some holiday/seasonal ideas into your preschool day, with the rest of the day focused elsewhere.

More Seasonal and Holiday Preschool Resources

As promised, I have more done-for-you preschool resources from Preschool Teacher 101. These are great supplements for your lesson plans.

Done-For-You Holiday Activities for Preschoolers

Click on the images below to check out the holiday-themed resources:

Done-For-You Seasonal Activities for Preschoolers

Click on the images below for seasonal-themed resources for your students: