Filler Activities

*Riddles and Brain Teasers*

It is great to have an assortment of riddles, word or number problems, and brain teasers on hand that you can give to the class. You can use these during snack time to keep everyone quietly seated, during small breaks during the day, and even at the end of the day to wind down. You can also write some on the board (more difficult ones) at the beginning of the day, and let the students know that they can think about them throughout the day, and the first to come up with the correct answer will get a prize.

*Pictionary*

This is great game to purchase so that you can use the cards for a game in class. You can also make your own homemade Pictionary cards. Split the class into teams (boys vs. girls, one side of the class vs. the other) and have them compete in a game, using the chalk board to draw on. Rewards and prizes can be used. This can get noisy to make the appropriate noise level very clear before beginning.

*Draw a Picture On The Board*

Draw a simple picture on the board (a square, a circile, a straight line). Tell students to come up one at a time and add something small to the picture to make it into a different object (ex. add a roof to a square to make a house). Each student coming up should add something different to make it into a completely different object (ex. to the house, someone could add a line at the bottom to make it into a spinning top).

*BINGO*

There are great classroom friendly BINGO sets you can buy out there, but you can also very easily make your own versatile BINGO sheets to carry around. They should be blank BINGO cards that can be filled in by the student. Chose math equations or vocabulary words. For French or Spanish, have a list of words and their English translation on a sheet of paper and have them pick and choose which words to fill in each box with. They can use their pencils to mark the corner of the boxes if there are not any options for BINGO chips nearby.