Are you looking for activities to help aid discussions about bullying? Or do you need rigorous, interactive activities for your older elementary students? Look no further. We’ve got 15 amazing activities just for you! From interactive read-aloud to art activities, you’re sure to find an engaging activity that will keep your kids entertained for hours on end. Add these simple activities to your lesson plans for students of a primary grade level.
1. Story of Friendship
These printables are perfect for a book companion lesson. After reading the sweet book about friendship between a stick and a stone, discuss the theme of friendship with your students and show them the importance of standing up for one another.
Learn more: Firstieland
2. The Power of Words
Students write down unkind words they’ve heard others say. Then, they color a blank human figure to look like themselves. As they read an unkind word, create a tear in their figure to show how they hurt. Useful for building emotional learning skills.
Learn more: Hello Sunshine Teachers
3. Rainbow Math Sticks
Shake up your boring math lessons with creative activities centered around these rainbow sticks. Students can explore creating shapes or play with pick-up sticks to practice their addition skills. The sticks create opportunities for discussions between students about developing math games.
Learn more: Creative Star Learning
4. Forest Home Building
This camping activity is great for 2nd-grade or 3rd-grade classrooms. Collect sticks to prop up against a tree. Work together to stabilize the sticks into a forest home. Use it to teach students about friendship and working together.
Learn more: Rainy Day Mum
5. Alphabet Rocks
This cute rock activity familiarizes young students with the alphabet. Simply paint the letters on rocks and learn the letters! It’s a useful comprehension strategy to make abstract concepts like the alphabet easy to understand.
Learn more: Childhood 101
6. Rainbow Stick Painting
Let your little ones get creative with this fun hands-on lab activity. Paint the rainbow on some sticks. Then watch your kids create beautiful patterns and pictures. Sit back as they explore the different ways they can paint. A good resource for students with autism.
Learn more: Toddler Approved
7. Shapes with Sticks
Add this classic activity to your lesson plans in any week of school! Collect sticks of different sizes and shapes. Then watch your kids create shapes, sort by size, and count how many they have. Perfect for when you have limited time to prep for the day.
Learn more: Toddler in Action
8. Stone Men
The cutest of stone activities! These stone men are the perfect hands-on activity for students on a rainy day. Give them a selection of flat stones and help them assemble a diverse range of characters. Use the figures for a discussion on the challenges of bullying.
Learn more: Mom Crieff
9. Handwriting Helper
How can rock activities become writing activities? By simply having your students match the lines end to end. Ask them to sort the patterns and discuss why they sorted them in the manner they did. It helps them develop the necessary skills to reach comprehension standards as they grow.
Learn more: You Clever Monkey
10. Pebble Graphs
Build your students’ confidence with this graphing activity. Collect stones of different colors to sort by color. Have them discuss the patterns they see as they build essential skills for their future math classes.
Learn more: Lesley Sharpe
11. Number Pebbles
This stone activity is perfect for building counting comprehension skills. Have your little ones match the numbers with the correct number of dots. Then practice counting out loud to build their confidence in math. The stones can be used for an assortment of activities during any week of school!
Learn more: Making Danish
12. Story Stones
Story stones are great for helping kids visualize any story imaginable. Have your kids collect rocks to paint. Then let them decide what’s important from a story to paint on each rock. It gives you real-time student data on their reading comprehension levels.
Learn more: My Small Potatoes
13. Sticks and Playdough
Bring shapes from school books to life with some sticks and playdough and develop fine motor skills and imagination along the way. Craft 3D designs with this hands-on learning activity. Give students writing prompts asking them to describe their shapes and how they can be used in real life.
Learn more: Fire Flies and Mud Pies
14. Sticks and Stones Race
Race to 100! Students roll the dice and place the correct number of sticks and stones in each square. Sticks are tens, rocks are ones. The first one to 100 without going over wins!
Learn more: Differentiated Kindergarten
15. Wind Chimes
Have your students help collect sticks of similar sizes. Sand and paint them. Then add some hooks and string them together to create beautiful music. Let your kids jump and hit them to make music of their own!
Learn more: Happy Hooligans
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