Skills & Exercises

Basic Motor Skills

Connect-the-dots and connect-the-dashes exercises help students improve motor skills. The six basic shapes are also presented in connect-the-dashes exercises. Simple mazes provide both motor and visual skill practice.

Learning Letters

Learn the alphabet, improve motor skills and draw the picture through connect-the-letters. Included are exercises for both upper-case and lower-case letters. Our letter concentration game helps students learn the alphabet and develop memory skills.

Sound Recognition

Fill-in-the-letter and spell-the-word exercises address vowels and consonants. Rhyming words make it fun to sound out the word.

Vocabulary

Word-search games are entertaining ways to learn words and improve spelling.

Learning Numbers

Exercises to help develop skills in counting, writing and spelling numbers are offered in colorful holiday illustrations. Connect-the-number exercises help children learn to count while enjoying the picture they draw. Math riddles and flash cards provide fun activities for reviewing simple addition and subtraction skills.

Visual Skills

Want something a little more challenging? Let students try advanced mazes or focus on drawing skills. Good at details? Have students try their skills at exercises that focus on noticing details.

Working with Positions

Who’s on first, What’s on second, I don’t know is on third… Children will be entertained while working on positioning skills.

Recognizing Right & Left

Children will enjoy the colorful Christmas artwork while learning left and right.

Working with Sizes

How big is big? Four exercises challenge children with the task of differentiating big from small.

Writing

Let students send a letter to Santa or holiday greetings to family or friends.

• Letter to Santa – Writing a letter to Santa may be the first composition ever willingly attempted by children! Students practice letter-writing skills while sending their “wish-list” to Santa. In this exercise, each child is led through the process by an elf who teaches children how to create a password. A response from Santa will be posted in Santa’s Mailroom for children to pick up two days later using their passwords. The Web-mail reply is a full-page letter addressed to the child and signed by Santa. Print out, and the child has a keepsake letter to take home.
• Animated Postcards – For a shorter and quicker writing lesson, students can email an animated postcard, adding their own message of up to 30 words. There are 20 holiday designs to choose from, and all are appropriate for children.

Awards

These printable awards can be personalized with each student’s name:

• Math – Reward achievement in math exercises.
• Reading – Award students who have excelled in reading skills.
• Outstanding Performance – Recognize overall or individual performance.
• Special Achievement – Award students who have accomplished a special achievement.

Diploma

Award children for a job well done with a printable Elf Pal Academy diploma (signed by Santa and including the official northpole.com Santa emblem).

Stories

More than two dozen original, creative stories are found throughout Santa’s Secret Village. Many stories convey a theme or cheerfully teach a lesson—while entertaining and improving reading skills. All are richly illustrated with original, hand-drawn and painted artwork.

Hidden Stories

Children will enjoy finding the 10 ‘hidden’ stories from easy clues or by sliding the mouse over the screen. Stories are hidden in the Reindeer Barn, Mrs. Claus’ Kitchen, Santa’s Workshop and Santa’s Den.

• Raymond Learns a Lesson (Reindeer Barn)
• Gift of the Bell (Reindeer Barn)
• Where’s Raymond? (Reindeer Barn)
• Reindeer Games (Reindeer Barn)
• Chocolate Chick Cookies (Mrs. Claus’ Kitchen)
• Everyone’s Important (Mrs. Claus’ Kitchen)
• Sally’s Secret (Santa’s Workshop)
• Little Helpers (Santa’s Workshop)
• Where’s Jack? (Santa’s Den)
• Where IS That Sack? (Santa’s Den)

Personalized Stories

Children can personalize 3 different stories—each with themselves as the star! To create a personalized story, the students just answer a few short questions and with the click of a mouse they have a story about themselves to read, print, and keep. These stories are in Santa’s Den:

• Elf For a Day
• North Pole Christmas Party
• Christmas Eve Clean-up

Coloring Pages

All 12 stories in Santa’s Workshop are fully illustrated like the other stories, but these also have black and white versions of the illustrations that can be printed out for children to color.

These stories include:

• The Elves Save The Day
• Santa’s Computer Travels
• Use Your Imagination
• The Special Gift
• The Santa’s Secret Village Game
• Bud’s Wild Ride
• The Runaway Train
• The Doll Party
• Sunny Sky Adventure
• Baby Bart’s Rescue
• Sharing Something Special
• Special Delivery

Just for Fun! Games & Activities

Visit the Elf Clubhouse in Santa’s Secret Village for games and activities. And don’t miss the cute animation: the flying plane, the mailman at the door, the sleeping cat, and the jack-in-the-box!

• Birthday Cards from Santa – Sign up the children in your class and then they will receive a virtual birthday card from Santa!
• Elves’ Game Chest – Play Memory Squares and Swap Puzzles, or rock away with Dancing Santa!
• ElfChat℠ – This unusual feature uses “artificial intelligence” to enable children to chat with elves Bif and Bonnie. Just type a question about Christmas, Santa, the North Pole, or elves. Elf Chat reads the question and creates an answer. This innovative technology is a field of study in computer science involving conversation simulators.
  Note: These are robotic answers, so questions must be very simple to produce a logical response.