It’s not often that I’m more excited than my preschoolers to participate in an activity. But, as I was preparing this Roll-A-Santa preschool activity, I could barely contain my excitement. This was going to be so much fun, was all I could think over and over as I set up our game. Our game was going to teach so many things, but that wasn’t why I was excited. My kids were going to love building their own Santa and playing a game with mom! And I was right! My kids loved this game. They wanted to play it all morning long. It was such a fantastic, season specific activity to enjoy together.
Added to the sheer fun of the activity was the fact that we would be learning and practicing many skills at the same time. Roll-A-Santa helps develop social skills: like turn taking, instruction following, and problem solving; fine motor skills: like gluing and organizing on a page; and math skills: like shape recognition, number recognition, and patterning.
Here’s how to play Roll-A-Santa:
Materials:
We played this game with the pieces cut out ahead of time because of the age range of children we were playing with — 18 months to 5 years.
Every player needs a copy of the Roll-A-Santa pages, available here.
One 12-side game die, or 2 six-sided dice
A copy of the Game Key for each player, available here.
How to Play:
Play starts with the youngest player.
My toddler is working on glueing something together… we had to be careful what was near her or else it would have been glued down.
Each player takes a turn rolling the game die and then cutting out the corresponding part of Santa.
My toddler has a few of her pieces ready to be glued together, now if only she can get the number for a body, or arms, or legs, or a face.
For older children: The player who completes Santa first wins.
My preschooler is glueing the white trim onto her Santa’s body.
For younger children: The player who cuts out all of Santa’s pieces first wins. (Then the group can assemble their Santas together.)
My preschooler is putting her Santa together now that she has all the parts.
That’s it! This is a super simple activity, but it’s so much fun! We were laughing and being silly and having a great time while we were playing. My first grader came home from school and wanted to make one as well. He was so patient while rolling his numbers, and he took his time to get everything cut and glued properly. It was a great experience watching him roll his Santa too.
I love that while we were having so much fun, we were able to work on number recognition and shape recognition too. My preschoolers were so proud of the Santas they had made. I loved how they played the game together. We all enjoyed this fantastic activity.
We started with just parts, and ended up with a very cute Santa.
Comments 2
It is really a nice activity. I also want to add some tips.
Help!! The elves washed Santa’s suit and hung it out to dry but a snowstorm blew his uniform in different places! Roll the dice and find Santa’s uniform and help Santa put his suit together again! A great game for reviewing addition skills!
Author
I love the story set up you’ve offered for this game — it’s fantastic! Thank you for your kind comments. I’m glad you liked the game. 🙂