Fun End of the School Year Activities for the Classroom

I’ve written a lot over the years about different ways to mark the end of the school year, from printable award ribbons to making books, writing memories on stars, counting down to the end of the year, and activities for older kids to mark the end of the year.

It would be easy to say just go read all of those and call it a day, but there are lots of other fun things you can do with kids of various ages to mark the end of the school year.

Life Between Summers has a post with a variety of ideas for early elementary but I like the part that talks about the book A Letter from Your Teacher on the Last Day of School. How sweet for teacher to write a letter to each student, and the students can write letters to each other as well. It also has activities around Our Class is a Family by the same author.

You can also have kids write letters to the future students in your classroom that can be shared on the first day of school. This idea comes from Jennifer Findley, who has other end of the year literacy activities in her post as well as a free printable you can use for student letters.

For older kids I think it would be super fun to build a class play list and share with everyone to listen to over the summer. Kids can submit what song they think represents their class or holds a memory from the past year for them, and write about and/or share with the class why that song is meaningful to them. I got this idea from We are Teachers, and they have a sample playlist to get you started or if you want to add some songs to make the list longer.

I love the idea of a collaborative project for the end of the year that allows kids to share memories or things they’ve learned over the school year. The Eagle’s Nest has a bulletin board with cameras to have kids write and draw “snapshots” of the year, but I also love this puzzle printable where each student can draw something meaningful to them, and you can include a picture of the class in the center. You can get this printable from Top Teaching Tasks.

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End of the School Year Classroom Activities

Not all of us live where there is a lot of snow in the winter (or even where it is winter as I write this, but it can still be fun to learn about snow, what it is and why it falls, so let’s get into it!

First, let’s talk snowflake science with The Homeschool Scientist. They have a free prinatble snowflake science less that’s more than 60 pages long and good for multiple grade levels. The blog post linked here includes some fun snow facts, information about how snowflakes form and why they are both six-sided and (probably) all different.

Expressive Monkey has a great post about how snowflakes are formed and why they have six arms, and also shows some of the pictures taken by W. A. Bentley in the 1920s (more on him below).

You can also grab a free snow facts worksheet with space for kids to draw their own unique snowflakes from Education.com. Simple Living Creative Learning also has a paid snow study resource set that includes things like different types of snowflakes, the snow cycle, symmetry drawing with snowflakes, tips for snow safety, snow-related vocabulary and more.

Homeschool Superfreak has another great page for learning about snowflakes, which includes information about Snowflake Bentley, a great book to read (and person to learn about). It includes lesson plan ideas and links to activities.

Speaking of activities, if you happen to have snow around you can make snow ice cream or maple candy, paint on snow or with snow, or do some snow science experiments. If you get a ton of snow you could maybe even build an igloo or snow structure.

If you don’t get snow you can learn about how animals keep warm in the snow and cold temperatures with this experiment from I Can Teach My Child. Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls can help you learn why big paws (or snowshoes) make it easier to walk in the snow. Or make a snowstorm in a jar like this one from MomBrite.

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