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.

You can do these in class, if you’re looking for a filler, or if you're pressed for time, 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 your Open House packet, if you have one before the start of school. 

By doing this, you'll also have an instant bulletin board ready to go up, after students share their creations.  Be sure and make one for yourself to use to explain things and then post as an example.  This is my sample that took about 15-minutes, using clip art + adding a photo of my husband and poodle pup Chloe.

I think you’ll enjoy doing it as will your students.  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.

You could follow this up with some technology time, and have students type in words to their thoughts and make a word-art picture on the computer using the free tagxedo program as well!  I did a sample for me and one for my husband, so you could see a male sample. I filled in the caricature templates (see pix) so they don't look as much like a silhouette as I would have liked.

If you want to use my boy and girl "head templates" click on the link.  You'll need to change them to jpegs to use them in Tagxedo, otherwise find a sideview of some other clip art to import.

Click on the link to view/download the What’s On Your Mind activity packet.  

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.  My "Pin it" button is at the top on the menu bar.

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing so great as real strength.” –St. Francis De Sales

Learning To Count By 5’s And Counting Up To 100-Day

Via a Fun And Interactive Bulletin Board for a Great First Day of School Activity!

I only had to skip count by 10’s to 100 with my Y5’s as a report card standard, but I know this is a standard for K’s and first grade. 

A fun way to do this everyday as well as to count up to 100 for that special day, is to make this quick and easy bulletin board.

Here’s How:

• Choose a background color that you will be happy with all year long, yellow and white look nice, but I’ve also used wallpaper that’s neutral in color and has a textured look and feel.


• This is not that expensive if you only buy one roll and you can usually find discounted rolls that have been discontinued at most paint and hardware stores.
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• This display works great next to your calendar center.
• You can put it up on the wall if you don’t have another bulletin board.

• Choose a plain-colored scalloped border.
• Black will help it pop and looks great all year.


• The caption for this board could be: High Five’s For ______________________’s kindergartners/first graders!
• Cut the letters out with a die-cut machine, or print them out on your computer.

• On the first day of school have a room helper trace and cut out your students’ hands, or send a note home and the paper in your Open House packets to have this already done for you by the parents.


• Make a sample of your own hand and explain to children that they can decorate their hand with fingernails, and rings.
• If you want to give the hands a bit more pizzazz and a 3-D affect you can give them rhinestones for their rings.

• Boys may enjoy wiggle eyes, but don’t be surprised if they want a rhinestone too.

• You could make the rhinestone their birthstone, or simply give them a choice of colors.
• Use glue dots so there’s no dry time involved.


• For the girls’ nails they can color them as if they have nail polish on.
• If you want to add more pizzazz you can go over them with real glitter nail polish or glitter glue.

• If you want to use the board to show a specific pattern, use the construction paper that they are tracing their hand on in two or 3 different colors.
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• Left handed children should have their left hand traced for more opportunities to compare and contrast, count, or graph this board.
• Write the child’s name in small print along the bottom border of the hand.
• Print off a copy of the two posters and mount them on construction paper.

• These can be your school colors or something that you can live with for the entire year, or have the class vote on what colors they want.
• If you have 20 children in your class you have the perfect set of hands.
• If you have less, you will have to make extra hands,; if you have more, sprinkle them on the corners of the posters, heading and bulletin board.

• Put the rest of the hands, 5 in a row, across your bulletin board.
• Do NOT number them.


• On the FIRST day of school, when you are doing the calendar, choose a child to put the number 1 on the thumb of the first hand.
• When all 5 fingers of that hand have been counted (5 days of school) the child whose handprint that is, gets to choose a marker and write the big number 5 on that hand.
• Even tho’ the numbers are not written on the hand, you can still count by 5’s everyday that you are doing this calendar.


• You may want to post an already numbered poster to help them “see” and visualize this.
• I’ve made posters you can print off.
• You can also count by 1’s.

• If you want to make V-arrows connecting 2 of the hands when you get a group of 10 done, you can also use the board to count by 10’s!
• At the end of the year, everyone can take their hand print home.

• Click on the link to view/print the masters for this article. Skip Counting by 5's Bulletin Board.
• For a FREE 85-page 100-Day packet click on the link!

• I have lots of other 100 Day ideas at this link.  Simply click and scroll down to download as many as you want. 100 Day Stuff
  
• Thanks for visiting.  Feel free to PIN anything you think others may find useful.
• I hope you can drop in tomorrow for more back-to-school tips.

"A Pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Unknown"