Happy New Year! Well, probably ALMOST Happy New Year! If you are reading this then you are probably getting ready to head back to school after winter break. This means you are looking for a fun, effective, and educational way to get the second half of the school year started.
In addition, you are probably looking for something EASY! Well, you have come to the right place. We have several amazing New Year’s Activities for first and second-graders that are ready to teach. Therefore, you can continue to enjoy your holiday break AND be ready to step back into school in January ready to teach.
New Year’s Activities for Elementary
Kick off the new year with our 5 Star-Rated New Year’s Activity for Elementary classes. Our New Year’s Resolution Learning Quest. If you have never used a Learning Quest before, these are digital activities that guide students to independently learn about a topic.
This New Years themed lesson begins by having students read or listen to an informational text about the tradition of New Year’s. This includes information like who invented the concept of a New Year, and new year’s resolutions.
After students learn about the history of New Year’s they demonstrate their understanding through several learning activities.
New Year’s Activities for Students
All of the activities are ready to quickly be uploaded into Google Slides, Seesaw, or Easel by TPT. In addition, all of the activities are also available as printables. Choose what works best for your students!
Are you ready to see all of the activities included? Take a look below!
The DIGITAL learning quest activities include:
- Focus activity to help students get excited to learn about New Year’s
- Informational texts about the history of New Year’s with pre-recorded audio that can read aloud to students
- Note-taking sheets to record learning from the texts
- Variety of interactive learning activities with moveable pieces
- Links to video clip (videos linked to YouTube)
- Writing response pages
- Quizzes for each topic
Printable New Year's Activities
The PRINTABLE learning quest activities include the same activities as the digital. However, they are modified to fit a printed lesson plan.
- Focus activity that engages students in the topic of new year’s
- Informational texts *With the printed version students do not have the option of listening to the text be read aloud on the recording. However, you can read the text out loud to the class or play the audio from your computer.
- Note-taking sheets to record learning from the texts
- Variety of interactive learning activities, such as cut & paste matching and sorting activities.
- QR codes to video clip (videos linked to YouTube)
- Writing response pages
- Quizzes for each topic
Keep in mind that the note-taking sheets, writing response pages, and quizzes are all completed by hand in the printable activities.
Therefore, if your students are younger it may be more effective to have them use the digital versions to assist with this process. However, on the other hand, if you need additional practice with handwriting the printable version can be an easy way to add extra practice.
In addition to the different activities, we have also included the following.
- A self-grading quiz compatible with Google Forms
- Back-up mp3 audio files and instructions for use
Whether you choose printable or digital activities your students will still have access to the same opportunities for learning about New Year’s. Moreover, you will still have a set of several activities that are easy to implement in your classroom (however the printed activities require a bit more work to print and prepare while the digital learning activity can simply be uploaded).
New Year’s Lesson Plans for Elementary Classes
One of the wonderful things about our New Year’s Learning Quest is that it can be divided into several lesson plans. Therefore, it helps you prepare not only for the first day back to school but for several days.
Simply divide the learning activities into groups to assign a few different lessons. This is a great way to not only spread out the activities but to encourage students to focus on their learning.
By breaking up the content into smaller chunks students can stay focused and engaged more effectively. Therefore, they are able to digest the information better and maintain what they have learned. In addition, it teaches students the importance of taking time with their learning and revisiting a topic to learn more.
To further support your students in learning about New Year’s you can pair the New Year’s Lesson plans and activities from the Learning Quest with other appropriate activities.
While a growth mindset is a topic often taught at the beginning of the school year it is an excellent topic to revisit in January. Therefore, we have provided some of our favorite growth mindset activities below. These read alouds and other learning activities are perfect to pair with the New Year’s learning activities above.
FREE New Year’s Printables
In addition to the variety of activities above we also have a FREE resource! Check out our free New Year’s activity below. This can be used to further support you in getting back into the swing of teaching.
Whatever activities you choose to use, all of them are ready-to-teach! Therefore, with the exception of some printing or uploading, you have everything you need for a smooth transition back into the classroom post-holidays. Moreover, these save you tons of time so you can now go back to enjoying every last bit of relaxation during your winter break.
