Easy Activities for the End of the School Year

I don’t know when the end of the school year comes for you, but we have 10 days of school left as I write this. I’m not a teacher but I know how hard it can be to teach kids or do anything remotely educational this time of year.

We want these last days in the classroom to be fun and memorable but not a complete waste of learning time.

Minds in Bloom has a great list of end of the year activities that will keep kids engaged and learning. There are ideas for reflecting on the year, brainstorming ideas for summer, learning with sidewalk chalk, doing good deads, and of course celebrating the year with special events.

I love the idea of having a book swap because we all know reading during the summer is so important.

How many days of school do you have left? How are you preparing?

[Photo: Minds in Bloom]

If you are looking for fun active games to get the kids moving, I highly recommend this Floor Is Lava Board Game

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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