Games for the Beginning of School

Those first few days of school are not days for getting a lot done. They’re for getting to know each other, learning classroom rules, and getting back into the groove of being in a classroom all day long.

So why not throw in some games that will have kids working together and having some fun together?

The list of beginning of school activities from A Grace-Filled Classroom aren’t all games necessarily, but it does include one of my favorites, which is the beach ball toss where you write different questions on the ball and then toss it. The question your hand lands on is the one you answer. There’s also a printable “find a friend” (variation on person bingo) in the linked post.

This escape room for the classroom from Teachers Are Terrific (available at Teachers Pay Teachers) is perfect for fourth and fifth grade and will get kids up and moving. As described on the blog:

In this Escape Room, students match words to categories and then unscramble a message for the first lock code. For the second task, students complete a math puzzler to open the locked box. For the last task, they use a secret code to decipher a message that will lead them to the lock numbers.

The STEM challenge comes from kids choosing from available materials to illustrate a class rule in a physical way.

Proud to Be Primary has a great list of getting to know you games (including the beach ball one above), including asking questions with the roll of a dice or the color of candies, making paper dolls for each student and much more. These are great, relatively low-prep ideas you can do with kids when you need to fill time or just want to do a group activity.

Do you have a favorite beginning of school game to do with your kids? Let’s hear about it!

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Does Your Child Learn Better With Hands On Tasks?

Bring on the fall leaves, pumpkins and apples as we help little ones learn to recognize letters and get ready for reading with these fall literacy activities.

Practice letter recognition by feeding the scarecrow straw with the letters of the alphabet with this printable activity from ABCs of Literacy. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters so you can practice with either or match them as you “feed” the scarecrow.

Match the letters on fall leaves with the letters on the worksheet to play leafy letter match from The Kindergarten Connection. Kids can color in the leaves they find or cover them with dot markers.

Or do the same thing with this free pumpkin color the alphabet activity using lowercase letters. It’s from The Kinder Life on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Work on sight word recognition with this pumpkin sight words printable activity from The Connet Connection on Teachers Pay Teachers. This free download lets kids practice their sight words while they hunt for a black cat.

Help kids learn to spell their names with this apple printable activity from Books and Giggles. Kids can find each of the letters in their name on apples, put them together to spell their name, then count the number of letters in their name.

Twisty Noodle has a fall words printable coloring page where kids can trace the letters for fall words: acorn, leaf, apple and pumpkin.

Little printable books are so fun for early readers to read and color. I See Fall is a free printable book from Fun a Day that includes six fall items: acorns, sunflowers, pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows and apples. You have the option of printing it will all the words on each page (I see pumpkins, for example) or with the word see missing so kids can practice writing it in on their own.

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