Multisensory First Day of School Activities

In search of first day of school activities?  Sure you can do the usual, sit down, and share about summer OR you can jazz it up and add in fine motor, gross motor, handwriting, and proprioceptive input!  Maybe you have already started the school year but don't worry these first days of school activities are FUN any time of the year!   

In search of first day of school activities?  Sure you can do the usual, sit down, and share about summer OR you can jazz it up and add in fine motor, gross motor, handwriting, and proprioceptive input!  Maybe you have already started the school year but don’t worry these first days of school activities are FUN any time of the year!

Write a letter to your students telling them about yourself

Perhaps let them know your favorite food, color, movie and more. Tell them about the summer vacation you took. Tell them your favorite things to do outdoors and your favorite type of exercise. Explain to them some of the things that you use or will do during therapy sessions. Request that the student write you back answering some questions that you have asked. Some examples would be: What did you do over the summer? What are your goals for therapy? What is your favorite way to exercise? If the school year has already started just start off the therapy session with a quick interview of each other.

Happy and Healthy Hands First Day of School Activities

Have each student trace around one hand on a piece of the same color paper. On the hand, write different things that make the student happy and healthy. Hang the hands on the wall. Have the children go around the room. Do wall push-ups on different sets of hands. Can you guess whose hands matches whose print?

Getting to Know You Charades

Everyone loves to play charades!  Use this for part of your super fun, no prep first day of school activities.  Have the student’s act out their favorite things in different categories. For example, some categories could be a favorite sport, favorite book, and favorite outdoor activity.

Motor Match Up

Create a matching set of cards with various movements such as crawling, dancing, jumping, walking, and marching (use the Back to School Brain Breaks).  Pass out one card to each student. The students must move around the room and find the other student moving the same way that they are. Once the pair is matched up they introduce themselves.

Silly Name Game

Stand in a circle. Pick one student to go first. This student says his/her name and adds a movement (i.e. shakes head yes). The next student says the first students name and shakes head yes, then introduces himself adding a movement (i.e. claps hands). The third student says student #1’s name and shakes head yes, then says student #2’s name and claps hands. Student three then says his own name and adds a movement. Keep going around the circle.   Check out 25 Instant Sensory Motor Group Activities for more group games that require no equipment.

Name Exercises for First Day of School Activities

Make the children’s name into an exercise.

Group or individual activity to provide proprioceptive and sensory-motor input as a brain break or prior to fine motor or academic activities.  Download the Action Alphabet, print the pages of the student’s names, glue on paper.

Review with the students all the actions for each letter of the alphabet. Now go through each student’s name performing the exercise that correlates with each letter in their name.

Provide each student with his/her exercise name plate.  When time allows, the student can exercise his/her name as a brain break or prior to fine motor or academic activities.

Favorite Exercises

Work together to make a poster with all the children’s favorite exercises or warm-up activities.

Ask the child for exercises that can be performed at home or at the park.  Perform the exercises for review.  Then an adult or the child can write each exercise on a post-it note.  Hang the post-it note on the open file folder.

If possible, make copies of the poster so that each child can go home with the collection of exercise ideas.

Social Red Rover

Play a game of red rover trying different greetings.

Divide the group up into two teams.  Place one team on one side of the room and one team on the other side of the room.  Just like Red Rover the teams call friends over – i.e. “Red Rover, Red Rover send John right over”.  John then walks, hops, jumps, crawls or runs over to the other team.  Instead of trying to break through the other team’s line create an activity that John must perform.  Try Hi-5’s to each player, shaking hands with each player or hugs to each player.

Continue playing allowing all the children to take turns switching teams.  See if the children can think of other ways to greet each other.  If you have equipment available, you could set up an obstacle course in between the teams for the children to negotiate as they change teams.

More resources for the first day of school activities:

If you are looking for paper fortune teller ideas for school, this digital packet includes 4 templates to get to know your students, encourage positive affirmations, teach self-regulation, and take brain breaks!

Use these School Fortune Tellers for super fun first day of school activities.

All About Me Glyphs

All About Me Glyphs

In search of first day of school activities?  Sure you can do the usual, sit down, and share about summer OR you can jazz it up and add in fine motor, gross motor, handwriting, and proprioceptive input!  Maybe you have already started the school year but don't worry these first days of school activities are FUN any time of the year!