HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 🎉🎉🎉 I look at the first few days back with my students as a “soft-start” and here are some of the things we do during that first week! We all need time to get back into the routine, me included! I’ve got a great pack of FREE New Year activities included at the end of this post just for you!
1. Talk Time
I already have a built-in time called “Mindful Mornings” where kids can talk, read, or work on some activities for the first 15 minutes, while I meet with students to check out their take home books and we listen to the morning announcements. But, I make it a bit longer these first few days back AND I join in with them so they can tell me all about their break if they want. By giving them this time to talk or use as they like, it cuts down on interruptions during instruction and work time later in the day.
2. Review the Rules
During our Morning Meeting, I go over the schedule for the day and we review our classroom rules. We have 5 rules in our classroom and we discuss what following each one looks and sounds like, as well as what NOT following them looks and sounds like. During this meeting, I also let them know that we have some fun New Year’s activities to work on this week, which gets them excited to get to work!
3. Discuss Family Traditions for the New Year
We talk about family traditions around Thanksgiving, as well as our December study of holidays around the world, so they are familiar with what traditions are. At this time, we talk about any special traditions that their family did for New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
4. Read a New Year’s Book
I like to read Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution so we can talk about resolutions, making good/kind choices, and start thinking about goals for this year. I’ve seen quite a few great New Year’s books lately, so I will be adding to my collection! Can’t have enough books!!
5. New Year’s Activities
I use my New Year’s activity pages for several activities throughout the week.
- Our weekly poem is “Happy New Year” and we read and work with it each day. You can read about my weekly poem routines HERE!
- We complete the “Looking Back” activity on the first day.
- We also start our “Top 10 Goals and Wishes” pages on this first day.
- Later in the week, we do the “Looking Forward” page.
- As we are getting ready to kick off our informational writing unit, we do a fun “How To Celebrate the New Year” writing piece.
- Mindful Morning during this week also consists of some of the other New Year activities from this pack…
- Logic Puzzle
- Word Find
- Color By Code
- Crack the Code
- Crossword
- On Thursday and Friday, we work on the “Time Capsule” page. We usually pick the date to be around high school graduation time and we discuss a safe place to keep it. I message parents to let them know it’s coming home so they can treat it with care!
Click HERE to get your FREE New Year’s Activities Pack delivered to your inbox
and use these fun activities in your classroom right away!
Here are some other great activities for January!
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