Christmas Color By Note Printable Worksheets

I am a believer that coloring pages in music class have their place! (Besides just a super fast, no prep activity!) Coloring activities strengthens little hands for playing instruments, develops fine motor skills, and encourages visual discrimination of the different notes and symbols.

My favorite way to use coloring pages is as an activity to do while in a listening center. I also use them as a substitute activity or as a class reward for hard work! I also have other activities where I do not have enough supplies for each student. Sometimes I break the class in half and have one coloring while the other engages in the activity – and then we switch!

Christmas Elf Reindeer Kaboom and Rhythm Mats

I like to give students a lot of hands-on practice with reading and composing with iconic notation. My student’s favorite rhythm game is Kaboom! (Even my 4th graders still enjoy playing Kaboom.) With a little prep and this one bundle, you have at least two Christmas early elementary centers ready to go!

Students can us the rhythm mats in combination with instruments (jingle bells anyone?) to create their own rhythms. Or, there is a color, cut, and paste worksheet for composition, too!

Christmas Rhythm Picture Syllable Sort

I like to integrate reading and ELA into my lessons whenever I can! Reading and music have many elements that go hand in hand. Because I use a lot of iconic notation in my early elementary music classroom, students are already used to thinking of quarter and eighth notes in terms of one and two syllable words. This activity provides students the opportunity to do some sorting of Christmas terms into quarter and eighth note rhythms. For your higher learners, you may consider adding the word strips to the activity!

This activity includes standard and stick notation, as well as cards with and without text.

Paper Plate Ice Skating

We did a lot with music from the Nutcracker during the month of December. There are a lot of musical elements to review with this music – from tempo, to dynamics, to movement. Our culminating activity right before we go on break is to do paper plate ice skating. (Check out this short reel.) During my first year of teaching, my admin popped in for an unannounced observation while we were doing this activity. She was a little bummed to be stuck behind a laptop writing notes instead of skating with us!

This was certainly a highlight for my kiddos last year!

Paper Plate Tambourines

If you had a lot of paper plates left over from the above activity like I did… students enjoy decorating them to make their own tambourines. You can get as fancy (or not) as you’d like! They can be as simple as coloring or go all out with adding little bells around the edges!

After you have decorated these in centers, you can play along to your favorite Christmas songs. Explore rhythm and steady beat with their proud creations!

Jingle Bell Bracelets

Combine the joy of creativity with the magic of music with these simple, affordable pipe cleaner bracelets. Students can use the center time to create their bracelets. Any additional time remaining in the center can be used to play or explore rhythms and steady beats.

(And the classroom teachers will just *love* you sending them back to class!)

YouTube Activities

And if your sanity is just shot… my YouTube channel has a playlist of engaging Christmas music activities ranging from Rhythm Four Corners, Freeze Dances, Steady Beat Body Percussion, and Vocal Exploration videos!

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