Recycling Christmas cards - literacy and maths ideas

What do you do with all the cards once Christmas is over?  

Here are some ideas - you can take them as far as you want!

 

We took a selection of cards and started by going through them one by one, looking at them as though they were books and giving each a title. This produced lots of laughs, turning out to be great fun as well as thought provoking.

I then asked the children to chose a card that appealed to them and give it a title, list the characters and outline the story.  The next day the girls used their story planning to write the story in full.

 Jemima chose this card and wrote a story about some abandoned puppies.

Using a card like the one above, with younger children, you could chat about what is happening as a starting point and soon a story will emerge.

Name the puppies.

What are they looking at?

We also made jigsaw puzzles.

 The older girls and I looked at the Christmas cards and we discussed which cards would make easy and difficult puzzles. You can simply cut up a card into a number of pieces that your child can manage, or do what we did ...

 

 First, we cut the card into four pieces.

 Then into eight and so on, each time putting the jigsaw back together. We kept on halving the pieces until we could no longer put the puzzle back together.

Patterned jigsaws are more tricky to put back together than picture cards.

Reuben loved the jigsaw made from this card.

Can you think of a good title for the book with this cover?