Fun New Year’s Activities to Start Your Year Fresh

You've enjoyed your winter break and it's time to start thinking about school again. Kids will be excited to tell you about all of the activities they did over the holidays. Teachers will be reviewing rules. Start off by sharing some fun New Year's activities that will engage their minds and help them get back into the swing of school.

New Year's No Prep Activities

We all make New Year's Resolutions. Teach students what a resolution is and have them make their own too. You could even make classroom resolutions and set goals for the second semester. This fun freebie contains activities to countdown their favorite books, make reading goals, and write resolutions. It also has a fun word search, crack the code, and word work activities. Individual and group writing prompts are provided.

Growth Mindset Readers Theater with a New Year Theme

This is another fun activity that helps your students to learn what a resolution is and how to set one on their own. The fun stories help build fluency while students work together to read and perform these stories. Discussion questions are a great way to actively engage the students, help them work together, and acquire new thinking. Growth mindset subjects covered in this set include:

• Change Yourself
• Self-Improvement
• Strengths and Weaknesses
• Make a Resolution
• Perception
• Simile Interpretation
• Fresh Start
• Worry
• Fickle Humans
• Feeling Guilty
• Practical Help
• Resolution-Making

Grammar Games Silly Stories for New Year's

A fun way for students to work together and review grammar skills is with silly stories. If you've ever enjoyed playing Mad Libs, then these games are for you. Students work together to create funny stories by inserting words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) into the story. They practice their fluency by reading these stories to each other or the group. Hilarity will ensue as these stories are read aloud.

New Year's Resolution Graphic Organizer

If you are wanting students to write a New Year's resolution, a great place to start is a graphic organizer. This freebie will help to organize their writing. It would also make a great bulletin board display. Students create a goal and tell why they chose the goal, how they will accomplish the goal, who will help them achieve the goal, and when they will achieve the goal. Putting thought into their writing ahead of time and organizing them helps to create a wonderful thematic writing piece.

Check out this blog post, The Most Important Thing You'll Do All Year