Fun Beginning of the School Year Activities -- Team Mascots

My daughter goes back to school in a week and I know that whether school is in person, online or a mix for your kiddos it’s likely to look and feel different this year. But there are still a lot of fun beginning of the school year activities kids can do to get to know each other and build classroom spirit, no matter what the classroom looks like.

Teach Student Savvy has a great collection of beginning of the year activities, but one that caught my eye was the group name and mascot activity, which she has as a freebie on Teachers Pay Teachers.

This activity works for a range of ages and has groups of kids (could be the table or small learning group if your class is using the pod/cohort model) come up with a “team” name and mascot based on things the group members have in common or like. In a small classroom the whole group can work on the project together.

You could do this activity with a virtual class as well by dividing up into smaller groups.

Check out her post for a lot more great ideas for celebrating the start of the weirdest school year ever.

[Photo: Teach Student Savvy.]

Several countries have a day set aside to honor and recognize their inventors, but Nov. 9 is a special one that’s known as Tag der Erfinder in German. It’s celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and it falls on Nov. 9 because that’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr is widely known as an actress but there’s a lot more to her story. You can get a little of it geared to little kids in the Little People, Big Dreams book Hedy Lamarr (32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Frances Lincoln Childrens Books, suggested retail price $15.99).

The book explores her birth in Austria and how she spent time when she was young coming up with inventions. She became an actress, married an arms dealer, made her escape to America and became an actress again.

But she also helped develop a frequency-hopping signal device for airplanes that was used by the Americans and their allies during World War II. That technology became the basis for wireless technology such as wifi and GPS.

While Inventor’s Day is a great time to learn about Hedy Lamarr, you can take this opportunity to check out books and do little studies on lots of different inventors. If there’s an inventor or an invention your child is particularly interested in, that’s a great place to start. It’s fun to think about all the things we use every day that didn’t always exist; someone had to invent them!

For a start here at Craft Gossip you can learn more about Garrett Morgan, who invented traffic lights; Maria Oroso, who developed a clay oven that could cook food without electricity; and more female inventors and scientists.

And for more general inventors’ fun, check out this inventors word search from Fun Findery (and another from Let’s Do Puzzles) or take a quiz on inventors and their inventions from Flanders Family Home Life.

Fun Beginning of the School Year Activities — Team Mascots

Celebrate Inventor’s Day by Learning about Inventors

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