Classroom Activities After Holiday Break
Ahhh . . . that first week back from the two-week long Holiday Break. Students (and you) have to get up early again, get back into the school routine, and hunker down and focus on learning new ideas and concepts.
It’s the time when you look forward to what you’re going accomplish over the next three months or so until Spring Break. However, transitioning from home to school can also be difficult after the long winter break. Here are a few ideas for classroom activities after winter break!
I always plan a lighter week academically for the first week back after winter break. We do a ton of winter activities and learn new things, but I keep it low-stakes and make it, for the most part, a fun review week to help students transition smoothly.
Here are some winter ideas that you can use for that first week back to school.
Read Books About Winter
These are some awesome books to read during the first week back from break. They’re fun, low-key, and high-interest.
Here are even more books about hibernation and migration. Winter is a great time to study what animals do in winter!
Create a New Year Craftivity
This New Years Flap Book is perfect for the first week back at school. I enjoy doing a page a day over the course of the week and creating anchor charts with the students about goals they can set at home and school.
This New Year Craft includes dates for many years to come.
Math Winter Game Ideas
My students love these Roll & Spin Winter Math Games. They’re mostly a review of math skills and concepts from the Fall, but at the same time, they provide enough high interest and engagement to seem like something new.
The games are focused on developing concepts for two-digit addition and subtraction. Most of the activities don’t even have a winter focus and can be used at any time of the year. This bump game is a fun winter-themed game.
Also available are some Money Matching & Word Problems for Winter Clothing. The word problems are multi-part and often depend on answers to previous questions. It takes some thinking power to solve these problems, but they are awesome for problem-solving.
Winter Ideas for Language Arts
This first week back is also our transition into Expository Writing. Although we’ve dabbled in informational writing during the Fall, our winter writing assessment is informational writing, so we start going more in-depth with our writing practice, starting with Antarctic Animals.
In the past, we’ve written about penguins and polar bears. Here is an example of an anchor chart we created for penguins.
Since my students had difficulty accessing information about animals in books, I developed some informational articles, fact sorts, and QR codes about Antarctic Animals. These articles are perfect for second- and third-grade students to research and write about a specific animal.
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Virtual and Online Winter Ideas
During the years of COVID, I found a few ideas for virtual winter activities. I’ve pulled together some of the best online winter ideas for you!
Do your students seem much more mature and older after the Holiday Break? I’m always surprised at their level of focus and how they can problem-solve situations in new ways. It’s like they grew up over that two-week winter break.
Jessica BOschen
Jessica is a teacher, homeschool parent, and entrepreneur. She shares her passion for teaching and education on What I Have Learned. Jessica has 16 years of experience teaching elementary school and currently homeschools her two middle and high school boys. She enjoys scaffolding learning for students, focusing on helping our most challenging learners achieve success in all academic areas.