The first week of school is crazy, y’all! I know some of you guys were fortunate enough to not go back until after Labor Day, but this girl has been going strong since mid-August. And I couldn’t even get over the exhaustion of that week until now! 😊

During the first week of school, I try to be very intentional with my plans. We do a good amount of building relationships and learning procedures, but we like to have some fun too!

Here are some of the fun activities that I like to do during the first few weeks of school!

Tower Challenge

This is the first activity that I do on the first day of school every year! I do it before I even talk about any procedures or expectations! Don’t get me wrong, procedures and expectations are extremely important, but I prefer to make the first day of school more about being excited about the year and the kids wanting to come back the next day.

The challenge is for groups to build a tower in teams. Here are the rules that I give students for the challenge:

• Your goal is to build the tallest index card tower.
• You can only use: 20 index cards, 20 centimeters of tape, and scissors.
• You only have 20 minutes. Your tower must be standing by itself at the end of the 20 minutes.
• Everyone in the group must participate!

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Completing this challenge as a team creates more natural conversation than going around the room and introducing everyone (AWKWARD). Or even more than some of those icebreakers that we do at staff meetings and make us cringe. Of course, we will spend some time later getting to know real things about each other, but this kind of helps with the jitters!

Numbers About Me

I first saw this idea from Rach at Fifth Is My Jam and loved it! I displayed a slide with some numbers that had to do with random facts about myself. Students had to work together to try to guess what the facts might be.

I was surprised at some of their guesses! Some students were able to work out a few of my facts and some were able to relate numbers to facts about myself that I hadn’t even thought about!

After they made their guesses, I showed them my answers and they were so surprised! Then I had students make their own versions and have a partner guess. The students loved the secrecy aspect of it and loved being able to get to know each other in a different way.

Escape Rooms

If you’ve ever visited my Teachers Pay Teachers store, you can tell I love a good escape room! There is just something about solving puzzles that my students and I LOVE!

To get my 5^th graders ready for some of the concepts we’ll be learning in math this year in a fun way, we worked on my Multiplying 2 Digit by 1 Digit Numbers Back to School Escape Room and they had a blast! What I love is that they’re able to review and practice an important skill while having fun. They also work as a team, which I always love, but I especially love during the first week of school!

If you don’t teach 5^th grade, I’ve got you! Here are my other versions:

Adding and Subtracting 2 Digit Numbers with Regrouping (awesome for new 3^rd graders!)

Adding and Subtracting 3 Digit Numbers with Regrouping (awesome for new 4^th graders!)

Multiplying 3 Digit by 2 Digit Numbers (awesome for new 6^th graders!)

The best thing about these escape room is that they are just print, cut, and go! Absolutely NO locks or boxes needed!

So there you go… A few ideas to have in your back pocket for back to school. I hope that the start of your year is going fantastically! What are your favorite back to school activities? Let me know in the comments below!