One of the best ways to get your kids excited about learning is to incorporate fun (and sometimes tasty) activities! Games, crafts, and other high-energy activities are great to keep your kids engaged in whatever lessons you have planned for the day. These activities are great for building listening skills, social skills, and team-building skills!
Explore the list of activity ideas below to find the perfect one for your kids! These fun ideas cover all levels of elementary school from kindergarten to 5th grade.
Kindergarten
1. Scratch and Sniff Art
Help your little ones learn their alphabet with their noses. All you need is a bottle of glue and some flavored gelatin. Write their name (or any word) with glue, then cover in the gelatin powder. Have your little one follow their nose and watch the letters bloom into color.
Learn More: Fun-A-Day
2. Learning to Count
Get your kids excited about numbers! Write out 1-10 on shells, blocks, or pieces of paper. Then have your little ones place the correct number of pieces beneath each number. Use their favorite snack for a treat every time they get one right!
Learn More: Epic-Childhood
3. Simple Songs
Kids love to dance! This video provides a collection of short, easy-to-learn songs. Let them groove along as they learn numbers, months, and how to tidy up. A perfect addition to your rainy-day indoor activities.
Learn More: The Singing Walrus
4. Colored Salt
A fun sensory activity for toddlers and kids. Teach them colors with some paint and salt. Then let them feel letters, numbers, and words as they write them in the mixture. Store in an air-tight jar for months of sensory fun!
Learn More: Nurture Store
5. Name Trains
Write the letters of your little one’s name on different colored pieces of paper. Then help them sound out their names as they arrange the letters in the correct order. Let their creative side shine as they decorate the train cars to their heart’s content.
Learn More: Tippy Toe Crafts
First Grade
6. Rainbow Science
Combine science and magic with this paper towel activity. Simply color each end and place them in cups of water. Then watch as the colors race across the paper to create a rainbow.
Learn More: Best Ideas for Kids
7. Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt
Add an outdoor activity to your lesson plans. This fun and easy scavenger hunt let kids learn all about the world around them. Grab a friend and have them search together as a bonding activity. Great for science lessons.
Learn More: Keeping My Kiddos Busy
8. Noun Sorting
Help your kids learn grammar with this worksheet. Cut out the pictures and have your little ones place each image in the correct column. Use the activity to help teach about basic story structures during story time.
Learn More: FirstieLand
9. Lego Math
Got a lot of Legos lying around? Use them to help build your kids’ math skills. Build towers for lessons on greater than, less than, and equal to. Alternatively, divide a piece of paper into two and use the blocks to come up with different ways to make a number.
Learn More: Frugal Fun 4 Boys
10. Sounding Out Words
Work on your kids’ literacy skills with these fun worksheets. Have them sound out each word before they color it in. Practice building sentences with the words to help build vocabulary comprehension skills.
Learn More: Planning Playtime
Second Grade
11. Ice Cream Science Lesson
Combine snack time with STEM. Teach your kids about how temperature affects matter with this tasty activity. You’ll need some cream, sugar, and your favorite ice cream flavoring. Get the kids to shake the bags vigorously, and record the changes they see!
Learn More: Around the Kamp Fire
12. Paper Collage Art
Do you have a budding artist in your midst? Let their creative side bloom with these blank paper prints. Rip different colored pieces of paper into small squares, hand your little ones a trusty glue stick, and let them design away! Fold the paper in half for a holiday card activity.
Learn More: Arty Crafty Kids
13. Linear Measurement Scavenger Hunt
Give your math lesson a competitive spirit. Have your kids race each other to correctly measure various objects around the house with Lego blocks and a fork. Bonus points if they can convert the Legos to forks without measuring!
Learn More: The STEM Laboratory
14. All About Me Writing
Develop vocabulary and writing skills with this cute activity. Have your kids decorate their faces to resemble themselves. Then help them fill in the blanks with details about their favorite things, dreams, and biography.
Learn More: Inspired Elementary
15. Landforms Bingo
Make your next road trip an educational one! Get your kids to cut and color the squares ahead of time. Then place them on the bingo board. Have them pay attention as you drive along so they can fill in their bingo grid as you go. The winner gets to pick what’s for dinner!
Learn More: Priceless Ponderings
Third Grade
16. Muffin Tin Multiplication
Master those multiplication skills with this visual activity. Simply use a muffin tin and some small items for counters: marbles, rocks, or candy will do. Write math problems on index cards and have your kids solve the equations using the counters. This activity is great for working on double-digit multiplication problems.
Learn More: Frugal Fun 4 Boys
17. The Great Cookie Dunk
A tasty way to learn about the scientific method. This fun science activity lets kids experiment with different types of cookies and milk to learn about the principles of mass and density. Simply observe, predict, and dunk!
Learn More: Around the Kamp Fire
18. Jenga Grammar
Build your kids’ grammar skills as they build a Jenga tower! The different colored blocks correspond with cards that give your kids a grammar task to complete. From identifying nouns to conjugating verbs, this activity is perfect. The first one to successfully fill the board wins!
Learn More: Life Between Summers
19. Souvenir Plates
Transform boring lessons on the States into a fun art activity. Let your little ones design a souvenir plate that depicts a state with its flower, motto, and fun facts. Then have them place them in the correct place on a map of the US. Adapt the activity to teach world geography!
Learn More: Sensational Social Studies
20. Phases of the Moon
Can you think of a better use for Oreos? Carve out parts of the cream to represent the different phases of the moon. Then arrange them around the earth for a tasty lesson on space, gravity, and the earth’s rotation.
Learn More: Glitter in Third
Fourth Grade
21. Digging Deeper
Teach your kids how to create elaborate sentences. With each dig, add a new task for them to include in their sentence. This is a great way to teach sentence structures, adverbs, and adjectives.
Learn More: Pinterest
22. Figure Me Out Math
Put those math skills to the test with this fun activity for kids. Each description of you is solved by a basic math problem. Divide and multiply with either single or double digits depending on your kid’s math level.
Learn More: 4th Grade Fun
23. Apple Annihilator
Perfect for the fall season, this activity tests the properties of motion. Create an apple wrecking ball and place some markers in a bowling pin formation. Have your kids pull the apple back to different heights and see how far it can swing.
Learn More: STEM Challenge
24. Reading Detective
Help your kids become super sleuths in reading comprehension. Use anchor charts like this to remind them of the questions they should be asking as they read their favorite books.
Learn More: Ivy Morrison
25. Crime Scene Comprehension
A classic case of whodunit. Use your kids’ favorite story to create a crime scene that will test their observation skills. Watch as they gather clues, make a list of suspects, and solve the crime. Combine with forensic science experiments for a multidisciplinary approach.
Learn More: Comprehension Connection
Fifth Grade
26. String Art
Create amazing prisms of color! Help your kids thread colorful yarn through a plastic tapestry needle. Then let them pull the string through premade holes to create an array of patterns. Great for geometry lessons!
Learn More: Mrs. William’s Art Room
27. Balloon Car Race
Ready. Set. Race! These fun balloon cars are a fantastic way to get kids excited about science. Create a car out of a plastic bottle, caps, skewers, and straws. Blow up a balloon engine to see whose car goes the fastest. Great for learning about the properties of resistance and speed.
Learn More: Science Buddies
28. Playing Card Math
Create a playing card math station by placing groups of playing cards in a bin. Give each face card a value. Then have your kids put their math skills to work to figure out the range, median, and mode.
Learn More: Debbie Diller
29. Geo-Dough
Make a batch of geodough with this simple recipe. Dye portions are different colors to represent water, mountains, cities, etc. Then help your kids create a map of a region, country, or continent. Have them correctly place the important landmarks as they travel around the world!
Learn More: edtech101
30. Exploding Watermelons
We’ve all seen the YouTube videos on this one. Instead of just cleaning up exploded fruit, take the opportunity to teach your kids about potential and kinetic energy. Put on some safety goggles and carefully wrap rubber bands around your watermelon. See how much it takes to make the watermelon explode!
Learn More: 123Homeschool4me
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