Children’s Christmas Games: 15 Easy Ideas for Home (No Prep and Printable)

Are the grandchildren coming for Christmas, or are you simply looking for something to do on a long, dark afternoon? Children’s Christmas games don’t need a shop-bought box or a big budget. Here are 15 easy games for kids aged 3–7, with short rules, sorted from no-prep games you can start in a minute to quiet games for after the Christmas dinner. Most need only paper, a pencil or a few things you already have in the house.

No-prep Christmas games for little ones

1. Hunt the bauble. Hide an unbreakable bauble in one room. Say “warmer” or “colder” as your child searches. The finder hides it next.
2. Reindeer, reindeer, Santa. The festive version of Duck, Duck, Goose: walk round the circle tapping heads – “reindeer, reindeer… Santa!” – and run.
3. Freeze like a snowman. Play Christmas music and dance. When the music stops, everyone freezes. Wobblers become the next DJ.
4. Santa says. Simon Says with a Christmas twist: “Santa says pull your sleigh”, “Santa says be a twinkling star”.
5. What’s in the stocking? Put a few safe household objects in a sock. Children feel through the fabric and guess what each one is.

Paper puzzles: mazes, word searches and spot the difference

Paper puzzles are perfect when you need children to sit still for a while – while the turkey roasts or the presents are wrapped.

6. Christmas mazes. Help Santa find the present or the reindeer reach the sleigh. Trace the route with a finger first, then with a pencil.
7. Word search race. Two children, two copies of the same word search, one timer. Who finds STAR, TREE and SNOW first?
8. Spot the difference. Find five differences between two Christmas pictures and circle them. Grown-ups can join in – it is harder than it looks.

All three puzzles are in My Christmas Activity Book, which has 3 mazes, 2 word searches and 2 spot-the-difference puzzles, with the answers at the back. Print the puzzles twice for siblings or a rematch.

Games that practise counting and letters

9. Count the Christmas. How many baubles on the tree? How many presents under it? Write the numbers on a sheet and check together.
10. Christmas I spy. “I spy with my little eye something beginning with S” – star, sleigh, stocking. For little ones, use colours instead of letters.
11. Letter hunt. Write a Christmas word such as TREE in big letters. Children hunt for each letter on cards, wrapping paper or books around the room.
12. Shadow match. Draw the outline of a few Christmas shapes – a star, a tree, a bell – and let children match real objects or drawings to them.

Quiet games for after Christmas dinner

13. Christmas story chain. One person starts a story (“On Christmas Eve, a little reindeer lost his bell…”). Everyone adds a sentence in turn.
14. Draw-and-guess. Take turns drawing a Christmas object without words while the others guess: snowman, candle, mitten, gingerbread man.
15. Dot-to-dot challenge. Give each child a dot-to-dot picture and see what appears – a star, a tree or a bell. Then colour it in while the grown-ups have their coffee.

Children’s Christmas games for mixed ages

• Make teams of big and small. An older child reads the words in the word search; a younger one circles them.
• Change the rules, not the game. In I spy, the youngest use colours and the older ones use letters.
• Keep it short. Five to ten minutes per game is plenty for 3- and 4-year-olds; switch before anyone gets bored.
• Everyone wins. A sticker or the chance to hide the bauble next keeps the mood cheerful.
• Safety. Use unbreakable baubles for hiding games, keep small objects away from children under 3 and leave real candles out of games – LED candles are a safe choice for the table.

Free printable puzzles to start

Want to try a few paper games today? The free sample of our Christmas activity book has an easy maze, a dot-to-dot from 1 to 10, a counting page and a nutcracker colouring page – ready to print in a minute. The full 32-page book for ages 3–7 adds more mazes, word searches, spot the difference, colour by number and a shadow-matching game. For more ideas by age, read our guide to printable Christmas worksheets.

Download the free sample See the full book Printable Christmas worksheets