The Best First-Day-of-School Activities for a Fun Start to the Year
These ideas get kids excited, engaged, and ready to learn.
The first day of a new school year is a big one. Kids are getting introduced to a new teacher, a new classroom, and new peers. These first-day-of-school activities can help kids settle in and get excited for back-to-school season. Whether you’re a teacher looking for ideas the whole classroom can do or a parent looking for craft projects that can make the first day feel extra-special for your child, there’s sure to be something here that inspires you.
Many of these ideas are tailored to younger children, but there are also several activities that tweens and teens will enjoy. No matter how old a kid is, an activity that lets them share a little about themselves and their interests with the teacher is always a win. It’s an easy way to start building the important relationship between a student and teacher that will make this school year a successful one. Other activities on this list are meant to help students get to know their classmates or discover ways to manage some of the big feelings that might come up around the start of the school year.
Keep reading to discover some of our favorite first-day-of-school activities that will ensure everyone is excited for day two.
Apple Books
The old "an apple for the teacher" tradition gets a new twist with these cute, colorful photo books. They're a good way to introduce a class to each other and their new teacher.
Back-to-School Survey
Another way to get to know the class? Just ask them about themselves. This survey by The Daring English Teacher gets students to open up about their hobbies, their goals and their learning preferences.
Visual Schedule
It's one thing to try to memorize the order of the school day, and it's another to see it easily laid out in an easy-to-read format. The students can take turns matching the icon to the activity and placing it on the board as they figure out the shape of their day.
First Day of School Book
After the first day of school is successfully completed, no parent wants to hear the dreaded "I don't know," or "I can't remember," when they ask their students what they did. These little books will spell out their first day activities in black-and-white (and will get kids to practice their handwriting too).
DIY Pencil Holders
If they make a pencil holder on the first day, they'll be able to use it all year. Kids can easily DIY their own with recycled cans and color cardstock.
Pennant Glyph
Scaffolded Math and Science shares a fun activity where kids make these math-themed pennants by following instructions. For example, they'll have to color the stars based on their favorite class or color the hearts based on their birth month. In the end, the banners add a lot of color to the classroom.
Sticky-Note Expectations
Ask questions on a giant sheet of paper, and let students "fill in the blank" on Post-It notes that they can stick on the page. Beware: This teacher went through 600 notes on the first day!
Get-to-Know-You Jenga
Jenga is fun on its own, but with a few tweaks, it can also be a good icebreaker. This colorful set comes with different questions to answer based on what color block gets pulled.
Get the tutorial and printable at Teaching With Jennifer Findley »
Guided Meditation
School isn't just about academics; there's social-emotional learning to be done, too. Starting off the year with guided meditation might help them ease their first-day nerves, and it can give them strategies for how to deal with stress and anxiety.
Self-Addressed Letter
Tell them to write a letter to a very special pen pal — themselves. They can include private thoughts on their hopes, fears and anxieties for the next year. Deliver the letter on the last day of school, and they can see how much has changed over the course of the year.
Photo Magnets
Not only are photo magnets a cute memento of the first day of school, but they'll also help everyone in the class learn each other's names.
Mental Heath Check-In
Back-to-school season can bring up a lot of anxiety and negative feelings. Erin Castillo of #okayteacher came up with a great way to start talking about mental health in her classroom. She invites each of her students to write their names on the back of a sticky note and put it on a poster board in accordance with their feelings. It's a discreet and non-verbal way of figuring out who needs some extra help.
Kindness Clips
Get kids in the habit of lifting each other's spirits. With this activity, kids can put positive messages on clothespins, then clip them to their friends' backpacks for a mood boost.
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
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