First Week of School Activity
The Meaningful Teacher
Looking for meaningful activities for the first week of school to start building your classroom community right away? This back-to-school survey color by number flipbook is just the thing! Your students will take a short survey, revealing how they’re feeling as you enter a new school year, and then color the picture according to the answers they choose. Then, they’ll glue the cover on their picture for a fun, back-to-school bulletin board display!
Supplies:
- Astrobrights® Pack of your choice
- Printer with Black Ink
- Scissors
- First Week of School Activity Template
Directions:
1. Print the survey and flipbook template out on Astrobrights® Papers.
2. Have your students take the survey first. Encourage them to be totally honest! If you want to extend the activity, have a class discussion surrounding each of the questions. See if students are willing to share and lead a discussion as a class of what you can do to support each other! You can even work to find similarities so that students know they are not alone in feeling the way they feel as a new school year begins. This is a great way to begin building your classroom community the first day of school and ensuring that your classroom becomes a comfortable space for students to share how they are feeling!
3. After each student has completed their survey, pass out the color by number picture and flipbook cover page. Each student will take their answers, and color the picture according to their answer choices. This is great because everyone’s picture will turn out different depending on the answers they chose! If some students are embarrassed of their answers, you can even have them throw away the survey sheet after they color the picture, so no one will know which answers everyone chose.
4. Once their pictures are colored, students can cut out the picture, and the flipbook cover. They’ll place glue along the top of the color by number picture (where indicated) and glue the cover on, folding on the solid line.
5. The cover has is not a color by number, so you can just allow students to color and/or decorate the front however they choose! This is perfect to allow students to spread out around the room, and chat with their classmates as they finish coloring their flipbook.
These flipbooks are perfect for a back-to-school bulletin board display. And the best part? The survey stays separate from their flipbook, so if it’s displayed in the hallway, no one will be able to tell what their answers were! It just looks like a display of fun, back-to-school pictures!