End of the Year Countdown Ideas

Do you need ideas for an end of the year countdown? Some of the ideas below may require researching online to prepare.

Keep reading for details and then keep this checklist handy as you prepare this fun activities.

ABC End of Year Countdown

Airplanes-Teach students to make and fly paper airplanes. Find videos online for directions. Questions you can ask: How can you change your plane to make it go farther? Can you make a different kind of plane that goes faster or farther?

Build a boat– Gather tinfoil and pennies. Give students time to use the tinfoil to build boats. Students can count out pennies and see how many their boat can hold without sinking. Questions you can ask: Can you make a different boat that will hold more pennies? What other objects can you put in your boat? What other materials could you use to make a boat?

Color and Cut-Students can use crayons or markers, paper and scissors to color and cut shapes, people, plants and animals. They can create originial stories with their characters or they can retell favorite class read alouds. Add popsicle sticks to make puppets!

Dance Party-Put on some music and have a dance party. Learn the chicken dance, the electric slide, the macarena and the hokey pokey.

Exercise-Create a list of exercises for students to do such as-jumping jacks, push ups, squats, planks, sit ups or just hop, skip and jump around the classroom. Combine jumping jacks with skip counting for extra practice.

Fort Building-Have students bring in pillows and blankets and make a comfy pillow fort in your room. Students can grab books and read with friends in their pillow forts.

Grandparents– Teach students to write letters or make cards for their grandparents or they can send the cards and letters to residents at a local nursing home.

Hello-Teach students to make connections with others by saying hello! Check out Go Noodle to learn different ways to say hello.

Ice cream– Did you know you can make ice cream in a bag? Check out different recipes and directions online.

Juggling– Juggling requires concentration and practice. Students can learn to toss and catch two or more objects while keeping one object in the air. Grab three scarves or other small objects. Find videos online to help your students.

Kool Aid Painting – Gather some Kool Aid, small paintbrushes and water. Pour out a packet of Kool Aid into a small dish. Add water and stir. Use small brushes-like watercolor brushes and paint on paper. Students can use different kinds of Kool Aid for different colors! The masterpieces will smell great!

List making-Students can make a top 10 list of their favorites: foods you like, foods you don’t like, books, movies, games, animals…the possibilities are endless!

Make a marshmallow tower-Gather dry spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. Students use the spaghetti and marshmallows to build towers. Have a competition to see who can build the tallest tower!

Noise makers-Save or gather plastic bottles and fill with rice or beans (or both). Close the lid tightly and shake! You can use different size bottles and small rocks too!

Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures. You can use any square paper you have-wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, tissue paper, notebook paper or printer paper will work! You can watch videos or use books and help your students make great paper creations!

Puzzles– do jigsaw puzzles as a class. You can also make your own puzzles. Take a picture from a magazine or old calendar or use a cereal or cracker box and cut into 10 or more pieces. Give it to your friend to put together. Save your puzzles in an envelope to do again.

Q-tip painting– Gather q-tips and paint. Encourge students to draw a simple image of a flower, rainbow or a tree. They only need small amounts of paint. They use q-tips and paint small dots to fill up the image.

Recycle Robot-Save recycle items like cardboard tubes, cereal boxes, lids, newspaper, and shoeboxes to make a robot. Markers or crayons can be used to make a face or other details. Encourage students to name their robots and write a story about him or her. Where did he/she come from? What special skills does he/she have?

Sidewalk chalk- Purchase or get sidewalk chalk donated. Go outside and write spelling words, math facts, vocabulary words or draw pictures.

Tag– There are lots of fun ways to play tag. Here are 5 ideas:

1. Otters and Clam -Choose 3 people to be otters. All other players will be clams. When a clam is tagged by an otter, he or she is frozen and must yell “Help the clam!” The clam is unfrozen when two other clams hold hands and stand by the frozen clam and yell “Free the clams!” Clams freeing other clams can not be tagged by the otters!
2. Frozen Tag-One person is it. When “it” tags someone, that person stands frozen with their legs apart. In order to be freed, another player must crawl through the frozen person’s legs without getting tagged.
3. Rainbow Tag-One person is it and everyone else is assigned into 4 color teams-red, blue, green, yellow. “It” stands in the middle and everyone else stands on one end of the playing area. “It” calls out a color and everyone with that color has to move to the other end of the playing area. Any person tagged also becomes “it.”
4. Blob Tag-One person is it. When “it” tags someone they join hands and become part of the blob and try to tag other people.
5. Octopus Tag-One person is it-the octopus and stands in the middle of the playing area. All the other players stand at one end. The octopus calls out “Come run in my ocean!” All the players run to the opposite side. If a player is tagged, she/he becomes seaweed and stands in one place and tags other people that go by. The octopus can use other movement words such as skip, gallop, tip-toe -just make sure all players can do the other movements.

Under the table– Tape a piece a paper on the bottom of a table. Draw and color while lying under the table. Students can work alone or with friends on the under the table masterpiece.

Volcano- Building a volcano is a fun science experiment! Choose a spot where things can get messy-maybe even outside. Find a volcano activity-usually involving baking soda and vinegar-that you can do with your students.

Whistle-Teach students to whistle and then they can practice whistling their favorite tunes!

X-ray – Check out mystery science because it has a great lesson and activity on bones.

Yummy and Yucky– Gather different foods and taste them together in yummy and yucky combinations. For example crackers and peanut butter might be yummy. However peanut butter and pickles might be yucky. Another idea might be to have a taste test with blindfolds and have students guess what the different foods and decide if they are yummy and yucky.

Zoo- Read books about zoo animals. Students can research their favorite animal and teach the class. You can visit your local zoo-if not in person some zoos have webcams for a virtual field trips. Read If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Suess and students can create animals and/or design their own zoo.

I hope you enjoyed these fun end-of-the-year ideas!

Want more? Here are 50 additional FREE fun activities for kids.

Please let me know which of these ideas was your favorite!