The festive season offers a wonderful opportunity to energise your classroom writing practice. Even students who don't celebrate Christmas often enjoy the seasonal atmosphere and sense of anticipation. To help you harness this festive spirit, we've compiled 20 Christmas writing activities suitable for both primary and key stage 3.
These creative exercises will spark your students' imagination whilst reinforcing essential writing skills. We've included links to resources for both English KS3 Christmas activities and festive resources for primary to support your lesson planning. Let's explore how you can add some seasonal sparkle to your Christmas writing lessons.
20 festive writing activities for your classroom
Each of these Christmas writing ideas offers a straightforward and engaging activity you can use in your classroom. We've also included tips for differentiating to accommodate different year groups or key stages.
1. Write a letter to Father Christmas
Starting with a classic, Christmas writing often begins with a letter to Santa. This timeless activity helps students focus on the festive occasion whilst developing their letter writing skills.
- For KS2 children, Writing letters to Santa enables them to practise persuasive writing techniques as they make their case for gifts.
- For KS3 students, the Father Christmas letter template includes four Santa-related tasks so students can personalise their responses.
2. Christmas rhyming words
Children respond well to the rhythmic quality of rhyming words and phrases, making Christmas writing an ideal opportunity to explore rhyme.
- For KS1 children reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas', this Rhyming Words resource helps them identify rhyming words and use them to form their own poems.
- KS3 students can use this excellent Christmas poems resource to read festive poetry and create their own verses using the word banks provided. You can differentiate this for KS2 by focusing on one simpler poem and creating a shared word bank with rhyming examples for a four-line poem.
3. Letter to Scrooge
Everyone's favourite 'bah humbug' character, Scrooge offers an excellent opportunity for students to develop their persuasive writing skills whilst exploring the meaning of Christmas. Suitable for both KS2 and KS3 students, this Letter to Scrooge resource helps students structure their letters with persuasive techniques and sentence starters.
4. Festive speeches
Does Christmas go too far? If your KS3 students think the commercialisation is excessive, this Ban Christmas speech resource helps them organise their ideas into a persuasive argument. You can easily adapt this Christmas writing activity for KS2 by using sentence starters and a writing frame to support children who want to build speech writing confidence.
5. Christmas persuasive writing
Many people believe that Christmas starts too early in shops. Do your KS2 children agree? Are they experiencing festive overload before September's finished? Use this Christmas persuasive writing resource to help them plan a piece of writing that persuades the rest of the class to agree with their perspective.
You can adapt this Christmas writing task for KS3 by having students develop their own statement about Christmas commercialisation. A shared revision of persuasive techniques before writing will help them create their own independent piece to impress the class.
6. Christmas word play
Students will enjoy bringing festive cheer as they experiment with adjectives to describe their Christmassy experiences.
- For KS2 children, try this wordplay resource to support their word class learning.
- For KS3, adapt this Christmas writing activity by having students compete in a festive adjective competition. Whoever generates the most festive adjectives wins. The class can then use these word choices to create a humorous story or anecdote about Christmas.
7. Christmas literacy activities
Connecting literacy to celebrations helps children explore skills within a familiar context.
- For KS1, try these Christmas literacy activities which help children become more confident with the Christmas story.
- For KS2 and KS3 Christmas writing, explore a literary technique such as simile or metaphor. Ask your students to generate festive examples. These can be used to create a Christmas rap or song.
8. Festive interviews
Ideal for pair or group work, have your KS2 and KS3 students create a set of interview questions to ask a famous person related to Christmas or a character from a festive story.
- For KS3, students could interview Scrooge, Tiny Tim or Elf.
- For KS2, use this What would they say resource for excellent interview activities.
9. Christmas carols
Are your students tired of the usual carols they've heard for years? Why not create a new one? This is a great activity for exploring rhythm, rhyme and festive themes whilst developing their creative writing skills.
- For KS3, use this resource to help students compose original Christmas carols from scratch, experimenting with verse structure and musical language.
- For KS2, adapt this Christmas writing activity by taking a verse from a well-known carol and using it as a template for children to write their own version with different lyrics.
10. Christmas complaints
This activity helps students practice formal complaint letter writing whilst engaging with a humorous festive scenario.
- For KS3, use this resource where students write a complaint about a malfunctioning parrot robot or parabot they received as a Christmas gift.
- For KS2, adapt this Christmas writing task by using a writing frame with sentence starters to help children organise their complaint writing and practice formal letter conventions.
11. Christmas creativity
Why not try some festive word games and spark a competitive spirit amongst your students? This Christmas activities resource includes five tasks to help children explore their imaginative side and work collaboratively to create unique pieces. Suitable for KS2 or KS3 Christmas writing.
12. Design your Christmas display
Christmas wouldn't be complete without a beautiful student display. Why not have your students create their own Christmas art with supporting descriptive captions? If you're feeling ambitious, you could ask them to write a rhyme to accompany each image. Try this Designing your Christmas display resource for inspiration.
13. Christmas image inspiration
Nothing evokes the festive spirit quite like a beautiful snowy Christmas scene. Display a gorgeous festive panorama, have your students describe what they see, and create a shared descriptive phrase bank. Students can then use this for a group piece of descriptive Christmas writing.
- For primary teaching, the winter scenes in these Creative thinking posters for literacy are perfect for inspiring creative writing. Download and print or simply project and display the posters for your class.
14. Christmas cooking
This Christmas writing idea works wonderfully and can be adapted for any celebration or traditional holiday. Many cultures incorporate food, special dishes and cooking into their festivities.
Ask your students to describe one special dish, from selecting ingredients, through the cooking stages, to serving and enjoying the food. Everyone loves discussing their favourite dishes, and Christmas provides an excellent starting point for this writing activity.
15. Festive mystery
Everyone enjoys solving a mystery, and Christmas provides the perfect backdrop for a festive whodunnit. Have your students work in pairs or groups to develop a festive puzzle. They can create characters and a plot, then devise five clues to help other groups solve their mystery.
16. Christmas acrostic poems
Acrostic poems offer an accessible entry point for reluctant writers whilst challenging more confident students to experiment with language. Choose a festive word such as CHRISTMAS, WINTER or SNOWMAN, and have your students create acrostic poems where each line begins with the corresponding letter.
- For KS2 children, use this Christmas acrostic poem resource, which provides a helpful writing frame with the chosen word written vertically down the page. Encourage them to use descriptive language and festive vocabulary for each line.
- For KS3 students, challenge them to develop more sophisticated acrostics where each line forms part of a coherent narrative or explores a particular theme, such as the true meaning of Christmas or family traditions.
17. Christmas diary entries
Diary writing helps students develop their first-person narrative voice and explore emotions. Ask your students to write diary entries from the perspective of a Christmas character, perhaps one of Santa's elves, a reindeer or even a Christmas tree in someone's living room.
- For KS2, provide sentence starters and focus on describing events and simple emotions. Children should try to include details about what they saw, heard and felt during their Christmas adventure.
- For KS3 students, extend this Christmas writing activity by asking them to explore more complex emotions and include literary devices such as pathetic fallacy or foreshadowing. They might write multiple diary entries showing character development across the festive season.
18. Alternative Christmas stories
Challenge your students to reimagine a traditional Christmas tale with a twist. What if the Grinch succeeded in stealing Christmas? What if Rudolph's nose stopped glowing on Christmas Eve? This activity encourages creative thinking and plot development.
- For KS1, use this Story Boxes resource to help children create alternative Christmas stories by selecting character and setting cards from festive boxes.
- For KS2, provide a simple story mountain or plot structure to help children plan their alternative version. Encourage them to keep the same characters but change one key event.
- For KS3 Christmas writing, ask students to develop their stories with greater complexity, including subplots, varied sentence structures, and more sophisticated narrative techniques. They might also explore different genres, turning a familiar Christmas story into a thriller or science fiction tale.
19. Christmas newspaper reports
Transform festive events into breaking news! Have your students write newspaper articles about Christmas-related incidents. They might report on Santa's sleigh breaking down, a record-breaking snowfall or a community coming together to help someone in need during the holidays.
- For KS2, use this newspaper writing template to help children structure their reports with headlines, lead paragraphs, and quotes. Focus on the five Ws: who, what, when, where, and why.
- For KS3, encourage students to adopt different journalistic styles, perhaps comparing a tabloid and broadsheet approach to the same Christmas story. They can experiment with headlines, subheadings, and quotes whilst developing their formal writing skills.
20. Christmas character descriptions
Strong character description forms the foundation of engaging narrative writing. Have your students create detailed character profiles for original Christmas characters, perhaps a toymaker in Santa's workshop, a child experiencing their first Christmas or a magical snow creature.
- For KS2, provide a character profile template that prompts children to describe physical appearance, personality traits, likes and dislikes, and special abilities. Encourage them to use ambitious adjectives and similes.
- For KS3 Christmas writing, extend this activity by asking students to show character rather than tell. They should create a scene that reveals their character's personality through actions, dialogue, and thoughts rather than direct description. This helps them develop more sophisticated characterisation techniques.
