Christmas Worksheets for 1st Graders: Free Reading PDF

These free Christmas worksheets for 1st graders are all reading pages. Your child sorts word endings into stockings, builds words in sound boxes, finds the magic e words in a maze and reads a short Christmas story.

Read duck. Find the -ck stocking. Glue it on.

Each word uses a spelling pattern most 1st graders learn by the end of December. Your child can sound it out.

Our free Christmas reading worksheets PDF has 9 pages, with the answer keys at the end. No signup, no email. Two reading games, an ornament craft and our Christmas word family crafts are separate free PDFs in the list at the top.

You’ll also find all four PDFs in our printables library.

Jump to: what’s in the PDF · phonics · sentences and story · games · ornament craft · in December · FAQ

What’s in the free 1st grade Christmas reading PDF

Eight activity pages come first. The answer keys come after.

Page	Activity	Pattern
1	Fill the stockings	Endings -ll, -ck, -ng
2	Fill in the gift tags	Beginning blends
3	Read and color the presents	ng and nk
4	Build the words	Sounds in a word, with sh, ch and ck
5	Magic e maze	Magic e
6	Read and match	Short sentences
7	A Gift for Mom	A short story
8	Questions about the story	Reading for meaning
9	Picture names and answer keys	For grown-ups

Pages 4 and 5 show winter, not Christmas, so they work in January too.

Print at 100%. Black and white prints fine. Pages 1 and 4 are cut and paste, so they need scissors and a glue stick.

Christmas phonics worksheets for 1st grade

Pages 1 to 5 are phonics pages. These pages cover what first graders meet in December, from double letters and -ck to magic e.

Fill the stockings and the gift tags (pages 1 and 2)

Each stocking has an ending on its cuff, -ll, -ck or -ng. Your child cuts out the nine cards, reads each word and glues it on the stocking with the same ending. Bell, doll and hill go on the -ll stocking.

Page 2 has six gift tags. Each tag shows a picture and its word with the first two letters missing. Your child picks the blend from the bank at the top. The bank has cr, fr, dr, pl, sk and sl. Say the picture’s name slowly. Listen for both sounds at the start. Our consonant blends guide lists more blend words.

Read and color the presents: ng and nk (page 3)

Every present in the pile has a word that ends in ng or nk. Your child colors the ng presents green and the nk presents red. Song, hang and wing are green. Sink, bank and trunk are red. Say the word. Do you hear a /k/ at the end? Then it is nk.

Build the words (page 4)

Each picture sits next to one box for each sound. Your child cuts out the letter tiles, says the word and glues one sound in each box. Truck is t-r-u-ck. Brush is b-r-u-sh. Bench is b-e-n-ch. Ck, sh and ch each make one sound, so each one gets one box.

A lot of kids hear /ch/ at the start of truck. That’s normal. The word still starts with t and r. Digraph words has lists for sh, ch, th and ck.

Magic e maze (page 5)

Help the sled get home by coloring only the magic e words. The wrong turns hold short words that look almost the same, like cub and pin. Add an e and they become cube and pine. So your child has to look at the end of every word.

The e makes no sound. It makes the vowel say its name. Our magic e words list has more by vowel.

Christmas reading worksheets: sentences and a short story

Those patterns show up in sentences and a story on pages 6 to 8.

Read and match: decodable Christmas sentences (page 6)

Five short sentences sit next to five pictures. Your child draws a line from each sentence to its picture.

The skunk rings a bell. The kids sing a song. Every word is one your child can sound out, plus a few heart words like the and a. Read the whole sentence first. Then find the picture that shows all of it.

A Christmas reading passage with questions (pages 7 and 8)

In A Gift for Mom, Nell and Dad shop for a gift. Nell hides the box by the pine. Then Mom finds it. The story is about 80 words, with a few heart words like said.

Page 8 asks who the gift is for, what is in the box and where Nell hides it. Then your child draws Mom’s face and writes two gift ideas for Mom. If your child needs help, read the questions aloud.

The story says pine, not tree. Tree comes later in the year. More stories with questions are in our decodable stories by lesson.

Two free Christmas reading games: Gift Hunt and roll and cover

Gift Hunt

In Gift Hunt, 2 to 4 players roll a die and move around a ring of presents. Read the word you land on out loud. If it’s on your card, color its box. Each word on the cards has a small picture above it. The first player to color all five words wins.

The 20 words mix blends, like sled, drum and plum, with magic e words, like skate, slide and stone. Look for the magic e at the end.

You need a die, a counter each, crayons and scissors.

Christmas roll and cover

In the Christmas CVC roll and cover game, 2 to 4 players share 1 die. Each player gets one color of counters or crayons.

1. Roll the die. Find the column with the same die on top.
2. Read one word in that column. Any word you like. Then cover it or color it.
3. All covered? The game is over. Whoever covered the most ornaments wins.

Is the column you rolled full? Roll again.

There are three boards. Short a and i, and short o, u and e, make a quick warm-up. The third board has sh, ch and th words, like ship, chop and bath. Say each sound, then the whole word. For more short vowel practice, our Christmas CVC vowel mats have one mat per vowel, with an ornament, a Santa hat or a present in the vowel spot.

A Christmas ornament craft for magic e

The Christmas ornament magic e craft is a free 3-page PDF. A round ornament has two doors that fold shut. Inside, four short words wait for a magic e.

Your child reads cap, traces the e and writes cape. Then they color the cape. A cap sits in the same row, so your child has to read the e to pick the right one. The other words are can and cane, kit and kite, and tub and tube (a snow tube).

The front is a red ornament with gold bands, a happy face and a Name box. Page 1 has it in color and page 3 has it in black and white. Cut it in half and glue a half on each closed door. Print one-sided, at 100%.

Christmas activities for 1st graders: what they learn in December

By December, most 1st graders work on these patterns, in about this order.

• Blends, as a review. Frog, plant and truck are on pages 2 and 4.
• Double letters and -ck at the end. Bell, doll, hill, duck and rock are on page 1.
• sh, th and ch. Brush and bench are on page 4.
• ng and nk. Ring, song and sink are on pages 1 and 3.
• Magic e. Cake, kite, rope and cube are on pages 5 and 6.

Use the pages as a reading center or morning work before the break. At home, try one page a day for about 10 minutes. If a page feels hard, go back to the step before it on this list. Laminate the maze, the presents and the game boards for dry-erase markers.

For younger readers, our Christmas worksheets for kindergarten start with word families and CVC words. For Christmas sums and sight word pictures, see our Christmas color by number pack.

Three more free PDFs round out December. The Christmas Add and Subtract to 20 pack is 1st grade math, from a color by code tree to word problems. The Letter to Santa writing pack has a letter, a wish list and a snowy story. And our Christmas coloring pages star Luvinci and his story friends.

FAQ

What phonics should be taught in first grade?

Short vowels and blends come first. Next come double letters and -ck, then sh, th and ch, then ng and nk. Magic e follows. Vowel teams and r-controlled vowels come later in the year. This pack stays on the December part of that list.

What are some good decoding activities for 1st grade students?

Sort words by their ending (page 1). Fill in a missing blend (page 2). Build words one sound per box (page 4). Find a path of one pattern (page 5). Then read decodable sentences and a short story (pages 6 and 7).

What are some easy Christmas games for kids?

Try Gift Hunt, a free board game for 2 to 4 players. You need a die, a counter each and crayons. For a short game, play to three words. Roll and cover is even quicker to set up. You need 1 die and some counters.

Can a younger child use these Christmas worksheets?

They’re built for 1st grade. Late kindergartners who know their blends can try page 2, with a grown-up reading along. Our kindergarten pack starts earlier.

The takeaways

• The PDF is free and all reading. You’ll find 9 pages, with the answer keys at the end. No email.
• Phonics first, then reading. Pages 1 to 5 have sorts, blends, sound boxes and a maze. Pages 6 to 8 have sentences, a story and questions.
• Gift Hunt, the roll and cover game and the ornament craft are separate free PDFs in the list at the top.
• Download the free Christmas reading worksheets PDF.

In our reading games, kids hear every letter sounded out when they tap it, and they build words from letter tiles. Print a few of these pages for the holiday break. They are screen-free.

Sources

• Carnegie Mellon University. The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (word and sound checks).