What's On Your Mind? Back to School Icebreaker

1-2-3 Come Do An Icebreaker Craft With Me

What’s On Your Mind? Is an easy and interesting way to get to know your students. Use it as a fun icebreaker for the first day or first week of school.

No matter what the age group, I've always found that everyone seems to like sharing a little bit about themselves. This is a creative and entertaining way to do that.

If you have the time, do these in class, or send them home to be done as a home-school connection.

Older students can draw their own self-portrait (head) outline, or use one of mine. I've included two boy options, as well as two for girls to choose from.

I find young children do much better if they have some sort of pattern, as they tend to draw rather small circles that items would not be able to fit into.

If you’d like to have a ready-to share activity for the first day of school, include the directions and a template in your “Welcome to school” summer letter or tuck it in the packets you give out during Open House or Meet & Greet the Teacher Night.

whats on your mind craft, back to school activities, icebreakers for school, first day activities, getting to know you activities, back to school bulletin boards Explain to students to fill their "head" with "stuff" that's always on their mind.

Filling it with favorite things, hobbies, interests, people; things that they're always thinking about.
You can fill it with dreams and hopes for the future too.
These will mostly be positive things, but if something is always on your mind that’s bugging you or that you’re worried about, feel free to include those too.
You can show these things by drawing them, clipping out & gluing symbols/logos or pictures from magazines, using stickers, clip art, and photographs.
Writing down thoughts, words, a quote or an idea is also OK.

Completed projects make an awesome back to school bulletin board too. In my directions, I let students know that they will be sharing their minds with their classmates, as an interesting way to get to know each other.

Be sure and make one for yourself to use to introduce the activity and explain what you want students to do. No matter what grade I taught, my students always liked learning a little something about their teacher.

I really enjoyed making my sample; it only took about 15-minutes. I used clip art , a photo of my husband and poodle pup Chloe, and added in a few words, plus my favorite quote.

whats on your mind craft, back to school activities, icebreakers for school, first day activities, getting to know you activities, back to school bulletin boards Making a list of things they want to include in their mind, then looking for pictures to represent those things, provides an excellent pre-writing activity, and helps students organize their thoughts.

This fun getting to know you craftivity, is a special FREEBIE in my TpT shop. Click on the link to pop on over and grab your copy today, and let the thinking begin!

Thanks for stopping by. Time to take a break and unclutter this mind, which is a bit overwhelmed with all the back to school things I want to get done.