Each year, towards the craziness of the first semester, we have a day where we play “Reindeer Games”. Reindeer Games are a great way to review concepts we have learned throughout the semester and make one of the last few days before our Winter Break a little more fun (and easy on the teacher!).

I set up stations for my students to visit throughout the day, however, we have also played each of these Reindeer Games as a whole group, one at a time. Some years my students have been able to move independently to each station and complete it, other years, not so much. 🙂 . Most everything you see pictured here can be ordered from Oriental Trading and has been linked when possible.

This is our Reindeer Sight Word Toss game. I used clear library pockets and adhered them to the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Bean Bag Toss Game. I then used these printables to add our sight words to. I cut them out and placed them into the pockets. You can change out the words as needed to make this game leveled for your students.

My students love to Roll a Reindeer and this version can be played two ways! We like to play with objects. You will need some metallic chenille stems, mini hats, felted wool balls, wiggle eyes, and foam reindeer head cutouts. You will also need a die and this printable. Students roll the die and add the different parts of the reindeer. Alternatively, you can also play and add the materials to the paper itself instead of the foam reindeer heads. You can choose to have students glue each of the materials on, or just place them on the reindeer head for future use.

We have so much fun bowling each year and practicing subtraction skills! This cute set comes with 10 trees and two bowling balls. Students set up the pins (I usually put down 4 lines of tape on the ground to help in lining them up) and then gently roll the ball towards them. They then use this recording sheet and record the number of pins they knocked down and how many are left to create a math sentence.

This is another great game that helps us practice subtraction. You need two game markers, a dice, and this printable. Students roll the dice and move their marker back that amount of spaces. The first student to zero wins!

We also play a few rounds of Rudolph the Reindeer BINGO! Students can read a sight word out loud before covering the space or answering a math question (or you can just play BINGO!). My students also create a pair of these super cute Reindeer Glasses to wear while playing the game!

I also set up a station where my students can review sight words. They grab a recording sheet, pick up a rubber reindeer duckie and read the word on the bottom. After saying it, they record that word on this recording sheet.

In addition to all these fun activities, I wear my reindeer pajamas and antlers! We also read several books about reindeer to learn more about where they live, what they eat, and how they grow up! We spend some time drawing reindeer and work together to create a schema chart showing what we thought about reindeer, what we now know about reindeer, and any misconceptions we might have about reindeer. Epic books has some great books about reindeer you can read for free! (www.getepic.com).

As a parting gift for participating in Reindeer Games, I give each of my students a bag of goodies. They get a set of playing cards, new crayons, a pen, some stampers, a puzzle, and a cute bendy reindeer. 🙂

I hope you enjoy our peek into our annual Reindeer Games Day! My students love it and learn quite a bit about reindeer! It is a fun way to learn about this mammal and give in a bit to the craziness of the holiday season! 🙂