Our class had such a FUN time with our holiday class holiday sock exchange last year! Kids still come up to me months later and tell me that they wore their holiday socks they got just the other day. It’s one of the most memorable activities that we’ve ever done at one of our class holiday parties.
Supplies you’ll need
You will need one pair of holiday socks for each student.
wrapping paper and wrapping supplies
a book to read – I chose Santa’s Underwear
I chose to purchase all of the socks on my own but I’ve made a free printable note to send home requesting that each student send in a pair of wrapped holiday socks for the exchange. You can download the free printable at the bottom of this post. If you choose to do it this way, just make sure that you have enough backup pairs for any students that didn’t bring in a pair so everyone can participate.
To Play
I like to play this game to get our party starts so that the kids can wear their new holiday socks during the whole party.
You may have played a game similar to this before, but I changed it up a bit so anyone can play it easily. Normally you read a story and pass the wrapped socks back and forth when the words right and left are read. Instead, I chose a book that I wanted to read to the class, Santa’s Underwear. You can’t go wrong with a book like this, underwear is a magical word in any class as you know. So I read the book to the class, and every time that I said the word, underwear, they had to pass the wrapped gift.
Since I was the one who bought the socks and wrapped them all up, the students didn’t know what it was that they were passing around. I heard a few whispers that they were passing around wrapped underwear since they feel similar. Exactly what I was hoping for! When the story is finished, the students can open the gift they have in their hands. Everyone put on their socks and wore them for the rest of our party.
If you’d like to send home a flyer to have the students send in wrapped socks for the party, you can download the free printable below.
I hope your students love this holiday tradition as much as mine do!
See you next time!
Jenette
What size socks did you buy for your students? The photo had adult sized socks.
Thank you!
Hi there. If I’m purchasing all of the socks myself for kindergarten, I usually do half kid sizes and half adult sizes. Many of the kids are close to not fitting in the kid sizes and prefer the larger anyways but it’s nice to have both if we need to do some trading afterward. 🙂
So as you read the book and said the word “underwear” did you pass the socks left or right? Or heck left two times, etc?
We passed to the right each time, but you can be as creative with it as you’d like. 🙂
what other Christmas book could you use other then Santa’s Underwear I thought about doing this with home daycare kids so there’s a variety of ages. They love story time
You can use any book you want. Say you chose Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, you just pick a word that they’ll pass on, such as reindeer. Maybe a book with snowmen and pass when they hear the word snow. Really anything will work!