6 Engaging Winter Games to Make Learning Fun is a collaboration blog post that includes different winter activities that get your students engaged in learning during these cold months.
Content shared by: MARISSA DESPINS, RISSA HANNEKEN, MARIANNA MONHEIM, RACH JAMISON, TANYA G. MARSHALL, and RACHEL DEROCHE
Winter Games for Student Engagement
Does the winter blues get your students down? I’ve got something to boost student engagement. These winter grammar games are perfect for getting your students up and moving.
These January games include 7 hands-on grammar centers that review those pesky grammar skills and help your students better understand the function of each skill.
The grammar skills covered include:
- Building Compound Sentences: Do you Want to Build a Snowman?
- Possessive Nouns: Poppers Possessive Penguins
- Subject & Object Pronouns: Polly’s Pronouns
- Progressive Verb Tense: Van Der Frost’s Verb Tense
- Double Negatives with Negative Nelly
- Commas in a Series: Chillin’ with Commas
- Commonly Confused Words: A Winter Wonderland
If you’re interested in reading more, check out this blog post. Rachel from Uniquely Upper breaks down each activity and gives tips on how to teach grammar skills.
Winter Games: Snowman Story Builders
Marissa from Creative Classroom Core believes that reading comprehension can be both educational and enjoyable. This time of year she loves to engage students with “Snowman Story Builders.”
To play this fun winter game, students are divided into small teams, and each team is given a set of blank snowman parts (head, body, arms, etc.). Each part represents a different element of a story (setting, characters, conflict, resolution, etc.).
On cue, students collaboratively build their snowman by filling in these parts with information from a winter-themed story. The challenge is not only to construct a complete snowman but also to ensure that the story elements are logically connected and make sense.
This game encourages students to comprehend and analyze story components while fostering teamwork and creativity.
By the end of the activity, each team presents their unique snowman story, providing an opportunity for discussion and reinforcing reading comprehension skills in a festive and interactive way.
Learn more about the ways Marissa engages students with interactive activities by checking out the Creative Classroom Core blog!
Re-engergize your Students
As winter settles in, the classroom can sometimes lose a bit of its spark. But there’s a lively way to re-energize your students with these engaging winter games: multiplication games in math centers!
Rissa from Teaching in the Heart of Florida has found that this approach makes math more enjoyable and deepens students’ understanding. Infusing fun into math practice keeps the excitement for learning alive.
Interested in integrating math games in your classroom? Find out Why Multiplication Games are Good for Your Classroom and give your math centers a winter pick-me-up!
Gamify Reading with Engaging challenges
Engaging winter games for upper elementary students aren’t just group activities where a “winner” needs to be declared.
In fact, Tanya-The Butterfly Teacher has figured out a clever way to gamify reading to keep her students engaged during the winter; she calls them Reading Bookmark Challenges!
She says, “One way I keep my kiddos motivated to read is to ditch those reading logs and use winter reading challenges in the form of bookmarks.
Each bookmark has 5 reading ideas or “challenges” for students to complete. Every time they finish one of the ideas, they color in that section of the bookmark.”
This idea encourages students to compete against themselves as they strive to finish all 35 reading challenges. To add to this gaming aspect of reading, Tanya gives prizes at certain time frames when students meet their reading goals.
In her post 6 Engaging Winter Literacy Activities for Upper Elementary, she goes into more detail about how she organizes reading challenges, along with other fun winter ideas for your classroom.
Winter Games: Scavenger Hunt
Is it taking a while for your students to get out of “winter break mode”? If your sleepy students need a shot in the arm to get going after the holidays, Marianna from Creatively Comprehensive recommends a scavenger hunt! This engaging winter game is sure to wake your students up.
Your students will have the best time hunting for facts around your classroom – and getting some practice with asking and answering questions as they complete the activity!
This might be exactly what you need to beat the after-winter-break blues. You can learn how to design your own scavenger hunt (and even grab a free one) by visiting the Creatively Comprehensive blog!
No Prep Engaging Winter Games
Rachel from Fifth is my Jam says the winter season can be so busy.
You may be returning from holiday break, or you have benchmark testing, scheduled meetings, unplanned out-of-school days, and more.
But why wait that long to enjoy the festiveness of the cool air? This set of no-prep and low-prep winter games can be the perfect way to celebrate the season and enjoy all the holiday has to offer without bending on academics, especially if you’re feeling the push and pull of the second half of the school year.
These engaging winter games offer a blend of hands-on, engaging activities. Plus, there are plenty of winter writing activities to stimulate the brain. Acrostics will support vocabulary, and winter puzzles will keep the mind motivated.
But that’s not all. If you’re a teacher in a bind, these are perfect as supplementary activities, small groups, whole class teaching, for early finishers, or even to leave for substitutes! There are even a few coloring activities to soothe the soul.
All in all, let your students CHILL with some fun Winter activities! Find out more by reading about these activities and more over at Fifth is my Jam!
Final Thoughts for Engaging Winter Games for Students
Students suffer those winter blues as well. Going outside to play is just not as fun for teachers or students, especially with the not-so-fun cold temperatures.
Finding engaging winter games is important to keep the learning momentum going when going outside is a no-go!
These fun, engaging winter games are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting creative with teaching. Each activity shared in this blog post is a great way to incorporate fun indoor learning ideas for your students.
Be sure to read the blog posts to get more in-depth ideas on engaging your students with fun winter games.
