Are you looking for early finisher activities to keep your students engaged and productive when they complete their work early? Look no further! Here are 20 early finisher activities that your students will love. From creative projects to physical activities, there’s something here for everyone!
These early finisher activities will help keep your students motivated and on task while also having a little fun. So grab the supplies, turn up the music, and let’s get started with these awesome early finisher activities today!
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20 Early Finisher Activities
1. Art Projects – Give your students a selection of craft materials, such as paper, glue, scissors and markers to create their own pieces of art.
2. Puzzles & Brain Teasers – Provide worksheets with word puzzles, logic problems and other brain teasers for an enjoyable challenge!
3. Board Games – Utilizing board games like Scrabble Junior or Bananagrams is an excellent way for early finishers to build vocabulary skills while still having fun!
4. Geography Adventure – Use mini map booklets to teach your students about geography concepts and the continents and oceans of the world.
5. Story Maps – After completing a story, have students create story maps that organize key events or plot points into graphic organizers such as time lines, diagrams, or circle maps.
6. Imagination Scavenger Hunt – Create scavenger hunt activities which allow the student to use their imagination while searching for items in the classroom!
7. Journal Writing – Have each student write out their thoughts in a journal so they have a safe space to express themselves.
8. Book Clubs – For those who have finished reading a book, allow them to form small groups with other early finishers in order to discuss the book’s content, themes, characters, and more.
9. Reading Journals/Response Logs – Assigning students with reading journals may encourage them record thoughts about books they’ve read while also reflecting on connections between themselves personally and what they have just read (i.e., “exploring my thoughts”).
10. Building with Blocks – Offer students the opportunity to use mathematical blocks such as base ten blocks or fraction tiles to build various structures and represent different numbers in multiple ways.
11. Create a Comic Strip – Ask students to use paper, pencils, and markers to draw comic strips about characters, plots, or themes from books they have been reading!
12. Science & Math Integration Projects – Fun activities such as designing bridges out of straws or building paper airplanes allow students to merge two subject matters together while they explore mathematics concepts like measurement and geometric shapes!
13. Choice Boards – Print these ready-made choice boards with early finisher activities to keep your students on track and engaged in meaningful learning.
14. Fun With Clay – Provide some modeling clay for your students to mold into whatever shapes they choose !
15. Dice Games – Games that involve rolling dice help students to understand probability and numerical operations in a fun way.
16. Online Resources – Provide access to online resources such as audiobooks, digital magazines and newspapers, e-books, virtual libraries, educational websites such as National Geographic for Kids, so that students can engage with text in different mediums beyond print books alone.
17. Cereal Box Book Report – Have students assemble a creative book report on a cereal box using this ready-to-go Cereal Box Book Report template, complete with scoring rubric!
18. Make-Your-Own Mini Book – Give each student paper, scissors and glue to create their own mini books of stories or pictures.
19. Science Experiments – Set up some experiments for your students that explore basic scientific concepts such as magnetism or gravity!
20. Build a Tower – Provide the student with simple building blocks or straws and ask them to build something tall!
These early finisher activities are a great way to keep your students engaged, motivated and having fun while they learn. Whether you’re working as a class or having students work independently, there is an activity that can help provide an enjoyable learning experience for each of your students! With the right supplies and some creativity on your part, these activities will be sure to bring smiles to faces in no time at all.