Great Activities For Grade Schoolers

Written By Penny Warner.

Students learn more effectively if you actively engage them in hands-on activities. Any instructional unit can be turned into an adventure with a little imagination and creativity. Here are some suggestions for activities you can use with your grade school students to enhance their skills and scores.

Greeting Cards. Have the students make their own greeting cards and enhance their language skills using crafts supplies and materials. Provide paper, pens, glue, glitter, scissors, stamps, stickers and other embellishments to let them express their thoughts and feelings on special celebrations.

Race Cars. Help kids learn to follow directions and problem solve by letting them build and decorate their own racecars with decals, stickers, paints and pens. Then design a racetrack and have a racecar competition to see how fast the cars can go.

Growth Chart. Hang a chart that measures the growth of your students throughout the school year. Then design a unit to teach how a healthy body develops, the importance of good nutrition and how the students have changed over the year.

Photo Frames. Teach a unit on families and have the students create frames for all their family members. Give them frames to decorate with stickers, jewels, flowers, chenille stems, wiggly eyes, feathers and other craft items. Have them spell out their names using foam letters and then take their pictures for the frames. Compare pictures of the kids at the beginning of the year, at the middle of the year and at the end of the year.

Bookmarks. Create personalized bookmarks for all the classroom textbooks to make reading and studying more fun. Supply craft materials such as foam letters and numbers, flower decals, school stickers, ribbon, fringe, wiggly eyes and markers to use for decorations. Cut the bookmarks from foil paper, felt or foam with craft scissors. 

Fun Hats. When you're studying a special topic such as a favorite book, special time period or science project, make fun hats to fit the theme. Give the students plain baseball caps or visors and decorate them with flowers, butterflies, bugs, feathers, wiggly eyes, flags, small animals, buttons, chenille stems, glitter glue, fringe or foam alphabet letters. Have students wear their hats while studying the topic.

Bug Boxes. Enhance your nature studies by creating bug boxes with craft supplies. Then, create your own bugs to put inside the boxes and set up a display of bug life. Or, create a frog, dinosaur, bird or jungle display with small animals.   

Fun in the Sun. If you're studying weather, create giant suns and sun catchers for the classroom. Decorate your own thermometers and chart the temperature each day. Fill sand pails and create colored sand bottles. Let the kids create their own personalized sunglasses, wind chimes for windy days, rain hats for rainy days or snow storm jars for snowy days.