End of the Year Activity Ideas for a Lower Elementary Classroom
For the last week of school we had four days. Day one was Language Day, day two was Math Day, day three was Cultural Day, and day four was field day! Here are some of the activities we did each day!
Day 1: Language Day
This group of students really like doing word searches, so I printed out a summer word search for the students to do while we waited for everyone to get there. When everyone arrived, I told the students our big project for today was to do a reader’s theater. It was about a train. I read it to them once, then they picked parts. While I was highlighting everyone’s part, the students ate snack. After snack, we read through the play once, then we started making props. After that, we went to our school stage and practiced the play one time. In the afternoon, we performed the play for the kindergarteners.
In the afternoon we also did some language activities.
Language Symbol Hunt and Sentences
For this activity, I cut and laminated some of the grammar symbols and then hid them around the playground. The students had to find a symbol and then with all the students they had to try to make a sentence with what symbols they had collected. The students stood in the spot of the sentence where they went and then they said a word that would work with their symbol and the sentence.
Day 2: Math Day
For Math Day, I wanted to do money math.
I made a math shop and the students got to pick which math works they did. Once they completed a work, they would get that amount of money to go with it. Then I set up a tiny prize store for the students to “spend” their money at. They were very engaged with this activity and it basically filled up the whole day!
For the “Mystery Group Game” listed above, I set up a life size addition bingo board finger chart!
The students rolled a dice and moved that many spaces and answered the addition question that they landed on!
Day 3: Cultural Day
For Cultural Day, we did Cultural Activities. Since I taught Kindergarten last year, I had the student write a letter to their future selves to be opened in June 2023, because I knew I would have most of them in first grade next year. I cannot believe it was already time to open them! For the new students that started in August, I had them write a letter to themselves at their interview for the school so that I would have it ready for them in June and everyone in the class would be able to participate. Each student stood up and opened their letter and read it to the class. They thought it was hilarious and also they noticed that they forgot to put capital letters and periods in their sentences since they learned about those more this year. We invited the Kindergarteners in and my current students and my future students wrote letters to themselves for next year! It really was an awesome project!
Since we learned about all the continents and some of their countries this year, we did an activity were I wrote down the country names and the students matched it to their continents.
Day 4: Field Day
The whole school had a bunch of activities outside! A great way to end a fabulous year!