{"id":2664,"date":"2023-08-04T12:54:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T16:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/?p=2664"},"modified":"2025-09-05T10:52:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T14:52:02","slug":"back-to-school-activities-for-the-first-few-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/back-to-school-activities-for-the-first-few-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to School Activities For The Primary Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

Heading back to school?\u00a0 Looking for some fun activities to try out during the first few weeks?\u00a0 Check out these fun ideas and activities that can help your get to know your students!<\/p>\n

Back to School Bingo<\/h2>\n

This is a fun way to get to know each other!\u00a0 You can create your own bingo cards using the names of students and teachers in your school!\u00a0 Or maybe you want to use pictures of school supplies or animals or whatever your students are interested in!<\/p>\n

\"back<\/p>\n

If you are looking to assess basic skills you could play Color or Shape Bingo games!\u00a0 Since the objective of this game is to identify whatever the caller calls out, it can be used in many, many ways across many subjects!<\/p>\n

All About Me Booklet<\/h2>\n

Students love telling you all about their lives!\u00a0 What better way to do this than to have them create an All About Me book<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"all<\/a><\/p>\n

They can share it with the class or display it on their desks for Open House!<\/p>\n

Create Classroom Rules Together<\/h2>\n

While this may not sound like fun, it all depends on how you do it.\u00a0 You could group students together and have them come up with a rule to share with the rest of the class.\u00a0 Then they could design a poster about their rule together and have it displayed in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\"classroom
Primary classroom rules handwritten by the teacher.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You could also play a “Which one doesn’t belong?” kind of game.\u00a0 List 3 rules – 2 serious ones and one that is silly and clearly not a rule.\u00a0 For example: Which two do you think are the real rules?\u00a0 a) No running in the halls b) Always walk in a line c) Crab walk through the halls.\u00a0 Students will likely have a good laugh at the silly option.\u00a0 You can cross it out and keep the other rules and talk about why they are important.<\/p>\n

Design Name Plates<\/h2>\n

Students can make name plates for their desks.\u00a0 Give them markers, crayons, and colored pencils and let them go!\u00a0 See what lovely creations they make!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All About Me Riddles<\/h2>\n

Students can share more about their favorite things by creating riddles like these ones<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"all<\/a><\/p>\n

Students can present their riddles to the class and have their classmates guess the answers!<\/p>\n

\"all<\/a><\/p>\n

Drama Games<\/h2>\n

Get your students to bond over group games and activities.\u00a0 One idea is to have your students make up skits in small groups.\u00a0 They could be skits with a purpose like teaching social skills or proper school behaviors, or they could just be silly skits that make them laugh!<\/p>\n

\"drama<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beginning of the Year Letter Writing<\/h2>\n

Students can write letters to themselves at the beginning of the school year that they will open on the last day of school.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They can include the things they like, things they are looking forward to, their best subjects and friends, and then see how they’ve changed or grown at the end of the year!<\/p>\n

It may also be a good idea to have some Morning Work Packets<\/a> on hand (depending on your grade level).\u00a0 It gives students something to do when they first come into the classroom each morning.<\/p>\n

\"morning<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are teaching younger students, you might want to do a “soft start”.<\/p>\n

This involves having simple activities that students can do before they start any academic tasks.\u00a0 This could be coloring sheets, play dough, puzzles, books, drawing, or games.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of my Back to School resources for students in Grades 1, 2, and 3.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"All\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"All\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"graphing\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"morning\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"grade\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"drama\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Heading back to school?\u00a0 Looking for some fun activities to try out during the first few weeks?\u00a0 Check out these fun ideas and activities that […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-2664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-primary","tag-back-to-school"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Depositphotos_11105548_XL-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2664"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3587,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664\/revisions\/3587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theteachingrabbit.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}