How Many Airplanes Can You Find?

 

School Is Spooky Fun!

 How about letting the students decorate the classroom door? They can cut out pumpkins, ghosts, spooky faces, spiders, or whatever. 

But here's the kicker!

Put a current sight word they're learning, or a math problem (solved), or whatever else they want to show off about school.

And title it SCHOOL IS SPOOKY FUN!

Silent Ball

 

Have students get into a circle or lines where they can pass the ball to the next person without difficulty. 

Ways to play:

*Divide the team into 2 groups. Give each group a different colored squishy ball. If a student drops the ball, they’re out of the game. If they make any kind of sound, they're out of the game. First ball to reach the end wins.

*Play like "Hot Potato". Same rule goes for making a sound or dropping the ball. Your class keeps playing until there is one student left standing (or sitting).

Or come up with your own variation!

Spell Your Name Activity for Kids

 

LINK

Vocabulary Scoot

This is easily adaptable for Kindergarten!

Uppercase Match

A great variation to this would be to make a game of it. BINGO would make a great class activity, but this would be better suited for a small group of 4-6 players in small group centers.

Have the cards either in a pile in the center of the table, or inside a box where they'd have to be drawn out. First person to cover all their squares correctly wins! Of course, the other kids can check that person's card to make sure the squares were covered correctly. 

R is for Rocket

One of my Kindergarten teacher friends did this in her classroom. Since they're learning the letter R, their homework was to create a rocket using items around the house. Great activity, and the results were super!

Classroom Game - Alphabet Search

This last week of school is hectic, to say the least. So I came up with this easy game to get the whole class involved. 

I found some word searches on the internet, and put two to a page. I then gave a sheet to each child, and as a group they had to find how many times each letter of the alphabet was repeated. (They wrote the alphabet on the back of the paper, then wrote the number they found. They divided up the alphabet so that each child searched for a different letter, making the hunt quicker.) Afterwards, I had each table give out their answers, and awarded points to those who had the answer that matched mine. The group with the most points got to be "leaders" in line for the day.

Of course, it took a little while for me to come up with the answers, but we had a great time of it!

The Two Minute Book Report

Like all teachers, I read a story to the class every day. The majority of the time, the book tends to deal with something we're currently studying. Or it may be about a particular holiday we're about to celebrate. Either way, it's directly tied to something we're doing.

A problem came up recently at my school about upper grades having to do book reports, and I remembered how difficult it was to find something to say about what I'd read when I was in grade school. Which got me to thinking...was there any way I can start to prepare my students for book reports?

Here's the method I've adopted.  Using this simple wipe-off board, after reading the book, I get a quick consensus from the group. How many liked it, and how many didn't? (Show me thumbs-up or thumbs-down.) The number of likes goes underneath the happy face, dislikes go beneath the sad face.

Now, why did they like or dislike the book? What was their favorite part? And what part of the story did they not enjoy?

Not only do the children get into the spirit of discussion, but their answers are a great way to build their vocabulary, and use correct grammar.

In addition, I've often caught the children continuing the discussion, aka debate, during recess and center time!

Our Classroom Crossword Puzzle

Using our first names and index cards cut in halves, we made a giant crossword puzzle of our classroom. It was so much fun!

Pumpkin Math

We figured out the circumference of our class pumpkin by using a length of yarn. Then we measured the yarn using several differnt objects such as pencils, popsicle sticks, paper clips, unifix cubes, and markers. After marking our findings in a graph, we discussed more, less, and figured out that the smaller the object, the more we needed.