My daughter's 1st grade class is having a party next Friday before the break. We have about 1 1/2 hours. Our plans so far are to decorate ( and eat) gingerbread people and provide other finger foods for snacks on as well. I am trying to think of a game we can play as a class, in the classroom. Last year they did musical chairs to holiday music. Any ideas?
Freeze dance to kooky christmas and hannukah music (dreidl dreidle dreidl, I made it outta clay...)?
Where's my buddy?
Make a bunch of small cards and write different animals on them, or put pictures of different animals on them. Make sure that its doubled (2 dogs, 2 cats, etc). Each kid picks a card out of a bucket. They can't tell anyone what they are, but have to act it out. The goal is to find your animal match. Keep going til everyone finds their match, then start all over again!
Heads up seven up was my favorite classroom game as a kid. Here's a link to the rules.
Something fun might be to play the dreidel game, it's pretty benign in terms of not being reliious and kids love it and being as generally some Xmas stuff leaks into school it might be a nice balance.
Play the dreidel game - kids LOVE it and it's a great 1st grade math activity. I'm a first grade teacher and it's always a huge hit.
Since you're decorating & eating gingerbread people, it might be fun to play "pin the pieces on the gingerbread man" - like draw a big gingerbread man with pieces like, eyes, nose mouth, buttons, etc and play like pin the tail on the donkey.
One of the things that you could do that is like musical chairs, if the Freeze Dance. You could really do this to any music but there is a song called Freeze Dance on a CD called Kids in Motion. You could have the kids do silly poses when they freeze (i.e. when the music stops). You can order that CD on Amazon.com.
J. F.
For Thanksgiving one year when my daughter was in second grade I taught the class the Chicken Dance (but called it the Turkey Dance) and they loved that. We then played "Gobble, Gobble, Turkey (Duck, Duck Goose). If you can rename these games into Christmas themes then that could be fun.
2 simple games.
"Pass the Present" Have the kids sit in a cirlce. The teacher or an adult will read a Christmas book. One that preferable has the same word mentioned various times during the story (for example Christams, or snow or Merry). Everytime the kid hears that certain word, they need to pass the wrappeed present. Whoever has the present when the story is done, gets to open it. I usually fill the present with individual goodies that the winner can pass out to each of their classmates. Everyone is a winner.
"Unwrap the present" Kind of like musical chairs. Wrap a present in layers...the amount of students in the class plus one extra layer. Sit in a circle and play a Christmas song. Once the music stops, the child holding the present gets to unwrap one layer. Do this until all the kids have had a chance to take off a layer (just to make it fair). On the final round play the music again and only lucky person gets to open the final layer. Again, I fill the present with candy canes or something so everyone is a winner. Enjoy!
My daughter is in second grade and told me about a game they play called "Four Corners." One child is "it" and sits in the center of the room. They cover their eyes and count to 10. The other kids scatter to the four corners of the room (which have been labeled corner 1, corner 2, etc). The "it" child says, "Corner 1!" (or the corner of their choice), and the kids who are in Corner 1 are out and come sit with the "it" child in the middle of the room. You repeat this process until there is 1 child left, and that child wins a small prize.
I know, you're thinking that this game sounds kind of lame, but they LOVE IT. I asked her if things got out of control, and she said that the kids are all VERY quiet when they play this game, because otherwise the "it" child will hear you and you'll be out. Hmm! I'm thinking we should play this at home! =)
Try bingo with a holiday theme. You can print some off custom bingo cards at http://www.dltk-cards.com/bingo/
The general site of http://www.dltk-holidays.com/xmas/index.html has some really fun activities, including craft projects. They also have all kinds of activities for all kinds of themes.
http://123child.com/act/ also has fun activities. Just look under Christmas.
Have fun!
