Christmas Tree Prime Factorization Activity

Teach and practice prime factorization with this super cool Christmas math activity!

My 10 year old and I tried this out yesterday, and it was a WIN. We’ve drawn plenty of factor trees, so why not make them Christmas trees?!

Cutting out Christmas trees and using stickers is WAY more fun than completing a worksheet or doing a page in a math book, and I really love how this activity allows kids to really see what’s happening in prime factorization. By using some color coding with the “ornaments” on your tree, the prime factors just stand right out.

Greatest common factor isn’t anyone’s favorite math skill to master… but with some fun activities we can make it easier!

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Recommended Age: 5th – 7th grade, or ages 10 – 13

Supplies Needed:

• Green copy paper or green construction paper
• Color coding stickers – we used these Avery Color Coding Stickers
• A black marker

First, cut out some green paper Christmas trees. They don’t have to be perfect! You can even just make triangles if you want.

Then start with the number that you’re going to factor. We wrote this on a yellow sticker and put it on the top of the tree.

Next, choose a factor pair that can be multiplied to get the number at the top. For the example below, we chose 8 and 9 as factors of 72. We could have chosen 2 and 36, but that’s a little harder!

Use GREEN stickers for any factor that is not prime.

Use RED stickers for prime numbers.

8 and 9 are not prime, so we used green for both of them.

On row three, we broke down 8 into 2 x 4 and 9 into 3 x 3. We used red stickers for the prime numbers.

On the final row, we just needed to factor 4 since it was still not a prime number.

When you finish, all the red stickers are your prime factorization! Have your student write the prime factorization at the bottom of the tree.

2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 72

You can factor any even number and many odd numbers (that aren’t prime). But some numbers are more interesting than others. You can do 55, for example, but there are only two factors since they’re both prime – 5 and 11. Then you’re done!

Here are some good numbers to factor:

• 16
• 24
• 42
• 45
• 52
• 56
• 60
• 72
• 98
• 105

Need more Christmas STEM activities?

Here’s a collection of awesome Christmas STEM Activities for upper elementary and middle school!