25 Christmas Word Problems Year 3
Keep maths skills sharp and spirits merry with these 25 Christmas Word Problems for Year 3 — festive fun that's secretly rigorous maths practice!
The lead-up to Christmas doesn't have to mean switching off mathematically. 25 Christmas Word Problems Year 3 gives your students 25 festive, contextually rich problems right up to the last day of term — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, money, duration and multi-step thinking, every one pitched at Year 3 and mapped to the Australian Curriculum v9.
Each problem is a task card with the story on the left and a generous WORKING OUT panel on the right, so students show their thinking instead of just writing a number. Two identical A5 landscape cards print on each A4 page — cut them apart for a maths rotation, or give every student their own.
A guaranteed hit in every Year 3 classroom every December!
Why teachers love it:
- The whole thing is done for you — 33 pages of cover options, a learning intention page, 25 task cards and a full answer key
- Curriculum-linked, not curriculum-adjacent — a tick-box success criteria page with "I can" statements against ACARA v9 codes AC9M3N03, N04, N06, A03 and M03
- Students have to show their working — a dedicated working out panel and a number sentence line on every single card
- 25 problems = 25 days of Christmas maths — perfect for an advent-style countdown activity
- Ten cover options — pick the artwork your class will love, or let them choose
- Photocopier friendly — clean black and white, no heavy ink, no grey fills
Perfect for:
- Year 3 maths lessons in Term 4 and during the Christmas period
- Daily problem-of-the-day countdown to the holidays
- Maths rotations, centres and independent practice
- Fast finisher and extension tasks
- Relief teacher folders
- End-of-year revision and consolidation
What's included — 33 printable A4 pages:
- 5 pages of cover options — ten designs, two per page, so students can choose their own
- 1 learning intention and success criteria page — tick-box "I can" statements linked to the Australian Curriculum v9
- 25 task card pages — two identical A5 landscape cards per page, ready to cut apart
- 1 answer key — every answer with its number sentence, so marking takes a minute
- 1 terms of use page
Make the most of every learning day — these Christmas word problems prove maths can be magical!
HOW TO USE IT IN YOUR CLASSROOM
We've written a full guide to teaching word problems in the last weeks of term — including the four different things that get called "bad at word problems", and why only one of them is actually a maths problem.
📖 Read: Word problems in December, when nobody wants to do word problems
Inside you'll find how to teach into the working-out panel so it stops being decoration, why "altogether means add" is a rule that quietly breaks, twelve ways to run 25 cards that aren't a worksheet, and four ways to differentiate a single problem without printing a second version.
Planning your Christmas classroom?
Our Ultimate Christmas guide has more activity ideas, display tips and freebies to use alongside this resource.
SPECIFICATIONS
Format: PDF, set up for A4 paper. Exactly what's inside is listed above.
Editing: This download is not editable. The PDF is flattened to protect the design and the artists' work we license.
Printing: Open the file in a PDF reader and choose 'Fit to page' or 'Actual size'. Do a test page on plain paper first — card, colour and black-and-white all print well.
Licence: One classroom, one teacher. Please don't share, resell or post the file online; buy an extra licence for each colleague who wants their own copy.
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
You'll need a PDF reader on your device — the free Adobe Acrobat Reader is the most reliable. Double-click the downloaded file to open it.
If a page shows on screen but won't print properly, open it in Acrobat Reader, choose Print → Advanced → tick 'Print as image'.
Stuck? Contact us and we'll sort it out.
OUR HAPPINESS GUARANTEE
We want you to love every Mrs Edgar resource. If something isn't right, contact us within 30 days and we'll make it right. Because this is a digital file we can't refund a download that has already been opened, but we will always help you get it working. See our Returns Policy.
FAQS
Where is my download?
Check your inbox (and junk folder) for the email from Mrs Edgar with your link. You can also log in to your account at mrsedgar.com.au and download it from your order.
It came as a ZIP file — how do I open it?
On a Mac, double-click it. On Windows, right-click and choose 'Extract All'. Your PDFs will be inside.
Can I print in colour or black and white?
Yes. Our resources are designed to work both ways; black-and-white versions look great on coloured card.
The download won't start on my school computer.
Some school networks block downloads. Try again at home, or right-click the link and choose 'Save link as'.
