Ten Fun and Educational Spring Activities for First Grade Teachers
Spring has officially sprung! And we want to help you bring the bright, colorful joy of warmer weather, blooming flowers, and all things spring to your first grade classroom!
Keep reading for our favorite 10 fun and educational spring activities for first grade teachers. Get excited – some of them are done-for-you so all you have to do is click the link to download and use immediately!
What makes a great spring activity?
Spring is such a joyful season. The weather is warming up (or at least it’s thinking about it), the trees are starting to turn green, and everything feels a little more fresh and in bloom.
Spring activities bring the spirit of the season into your classroom and help your students connect with science and the natural world.
This is the perfect season to get your first graders moving, learning, and loving learning!
Spring-themed Active Subitizing Slides
Warmer weather brings more wiggles for you first graders. Take advantage of their blossoming energy and use movement to engage their brains and make learning more interactive.
These spring-themed active subitizing slides (you can click to download them for instant use!) feature fun suns and flowers and are designed to give your students a chance to get in some exercise and work on their math skills! Click here to see this in-action in our classroom.
Grow Your Own Grass
Bring the green from outside indoors with this fun, hands-on activity. You can have students paint their own clay pots or work in groups of 3-4 to paint a pot for their table.
Once pots are decorated, have students fill them with soil and plant grass seeds. You can teach them about the life cycle of plants while giving them a chance to get their hands dirty. Each day, they will be responsible for watering their grass and monitoring its growth until it sprouts!
You can continue the lesson by having students observe the grass plants, track how often they are watered, and measure the height of the grass each day.
March Madness: Book Edition
Have a classroom of basketball fans? Bring the fun of March Madness and tournaments in general to reading.
Create a bracket of books you have read together as a class and have students vote on which one they like best at each level of the bracket. Encourage them to explain what they liked or didn’t like about each book.
At the end, celebrate your bracket-winning book by reading it aloud as a class!
Spring Daily Message Displays
Start each day off with a warm, spring welcome with these editable daily messages!
You can choose from 12 different pre-written prompts or use one of the 7 spring-themed blank designs to welcome your students to class and get them engaged with a topic for the day.
Prompts include:
- today is:
- Our special is:
- Quote of the day:
- WOD (workout of the day)- use this option to fit some physical activity in!
- Joke of the day
- Morning work
- Class shout-out
- Word of the day
- The weather is:
- Sight word review:
- Number of the day:
Baby Bumblebee
Let your students use their crafting skills to make adorable pipe-cleaner bumble bees while you use the opportunity to teach them some bee facts!
Click here to download the free activity.
Growth Mindset Rainbow Craft
Spring is the perfect season to focus on helping your students develop their own growth mindsets.
This interactive craft also makes a perfect Spring bulletin board display!
Perfect for first graders, this growth mindset rainbow craft gives your students the opportunity to write out six “I can” statements that they will color and cut out to create a beautiful rainbow.
Felt Flower Cards
Have students cut out different shapes and colors of felt to create flowers. Help them cut smaller shapes to layer on top of one another and use buttons, gemstones, or other fun accessories to make the “center” of the flower.
You can use this activity to talk about different parts of the flower or let your students express their creativity first, and then write a kind message to someone inside.
Encourage them to share their flower cards with someone they care about!
Hungry Caterpillar Balloon
Read The Very Hungry Caterpillar with your class before creating this larger-than-life hungry caterpillar!
This giant balloon caterpillar would make the perfect centerpiece for a class party or an impressive doorway decoration.
Cloud Observations
This activity doesn’t require any materials, unless you want to take a blanket or two outside with you.
Wait for a warm day with lots of big, puffy clouds in the sky. Lay back and observe the clouds – try to find different shapes, animals, and objects in the clouds. Encourage students to be creative and see what they can identify in the clouds!
After your observations, you can have students draw pictures of the clouds they saw or journal about what they observed.
This activity is also the perfect introduction to learning about different types of clouds.
Tornado in a Jar
Spring is not just a season for flowers and green grass – it’s also a season of severe weather.
Using a mason jar, water, glitter, and dish soap, you can have your students create a tornado in a jar while learning about severe weather.
To make your tornado, fill the mason jar mostly full with water and add 1-2 drops of dish soap (no more!). You can sprinkle in glitter to make it more fun, but it’s not necessary for the experiment.
Once the lid is closed, shake in a circular motion and watch your tornado appear!
Enjoy the season with these fun and educational spring activities for first grade teachers
Bring Spring to your classroom with these interactive, hands-on activities that make learning feel as bright and sunny as the weather outside!
Whether you download one print-and-go activity or bring all 10 of these activities to your classroom, your students will love exploring and learning new things.
Need help creating a positive classroom culture this spring?
Download this guide to build a positive classroom community in 10 simple steps.
Click here to download 10 Ways to Build a Positive Classroom Community Guide now >>
