Our main goal this year is to take care of student’s social-emotional well being. While the weather is still nice, let’s get them outside and moving as much as possible! All of these games will allow students to maintain social distancing and require minimal materials. The idea is to make the students laugh and feel like kids! And don’t worry if you are 100% remote. A lot of these games can be played over Zoom as well!
Games and activities with chalk
Each student gets 1-2 pieces of chalk and when they use it up, the game is over. No sharing required. Perfect games for social distancing!
1. Outdoor poster art for Hispanic Heritage Month
Have students research a country, famous person, or artist. Instead of sharing their knowledge online, ask them to illustrate a sidewalk square to educate the community! If your students are learning from home, ask them to upload a picture of their artwork.
2. Pictionary
Easy to play in small groups. You can supply students with a vocabulary list to review or call out a theme each round.
3. Draw it!
This outdoor activity has a lot of variations!
- Teacher could read a story and students have to take turns drawing what they hear
- Students could pre-write something to read and a classmate has to draw it.
- Teacher could provide a handout with a description of something for students to draw. I did this monster drawing activity to teach body parts.
If students are playing at home, they can use whiteboard.fi or Kami.
Physical movement games
4. Simon Says
This game can be used to reinforce tons of different vocabulary!
- Body parts: Touch your nose, touch your head
- Actions: raise your hand, sit down, stand up
- Animals: Bark like a dog, meow like a cat, quack like a duck
5. The queen/king says
Vocabulary to target: Commands, prepositions, demonstrative adjectives
This game is like Simon says, but nobody gets out. You just tell the students what you want them to do without a catchphrase. To maintain the social distance, the teacher will ask 2-3 students to do something at a time. After students get the hang of it, you can choose a student to call out the commands.
Examples: Sit under this tree. Stand in front of that tree. Jump next to those flowers.
6. Find something
Vocabulary to target: colors, adjectives
The teacher will call out “Find something…blue/ small / round.” Students need to run up to something that matches the description and point to it. To maintain social distancing, call on 2-3 students at a time and create a rule that everyone has to find something different. Depending on your surroundings, you might want to spread out some colorful items on your school lawn to make this game work. Consider plastic eggs, craft pompoms, or PE equipment.
*This one works well over Zoom as well. Give students 10 seconds to find something around their house and hold it up.
7. What are you doing?
Vocabulary to target: verbs, present progressive
This is an improv game and a lot of fun!
Students form 2 lines. The first two people face each other.
Person A begins acting out a repetitive activity, for example dribbling a basketball. Person B says “What are you doing?”
Person A lies: “I’m baking a cake”
Person B has to act out baking a cake.
Person A runs to the back of the line and the person behind him moves to the front and asks “What are you doing?”
This keeps going until somebody can’t think of something to say or accidentally tells the truth.
Students love this game because they can make their classmates do ridiculous things!
