Back to School Egg Hunt!

Anybody else out there have a full day on the first day of school?  I remember back in the good old days when the first day of school was a half day.  It was so much nicer to ease back into the school routine that way, like just dipping your foot into the freezing cold waters of Lake Superior.  But somewhere along the line we decided to run and jump right in!  Probably had something to do with state required hours and minutes...

I do more talking on the first day of school than on any other day for the rest of the year!  And forget about sitting down for even a minute!  So much for cute shoes for even the first day.  The kids are in their own kind of agony.  Those hard school chairs are no friend to your backside.  I can hardly tolerate them for a meeting before school let along a whole day.  And if I feel like I'm talking too much, I can only imagine what they are thinking, having to sit there for so long listening!

So, I'm always on the lookout for a fun little activity to break up the monotony.  A few years back I came up with the idea of having an egg hunt.  Who doesn't love a little egg hunt in September?

 

Here's what you do:

1. Write questions on strips of paper that will get your kids talking about themselves, their summer, being back to school, your classroom, etc.

2. Put each question inside a plastic egg.

3. Hide the eggs around the room (obviously when the kids aren't there)

4. Students work in groups, having one person at a time look for an egg to bring back to the group

5. Groups discuss the question together, then return the egg to its hiding spot

The great thing about the egg hunt is you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it.  It can be a 10 minute thing or a 30 minute thing.  You can even come back to it later in the day.  It will get your kids up and moving around and talking with each other.  My kids loved it so much, that I began incorporating it into Social Studies reviews.  I put review questions in the eggs instead.

This is an activity you can pretty easily whip up on your own, but if you would like it to be that much easier, you can find the Egg Hunt activity along with many more in my First Week of School Activities set in my TPT Store!

I hope you have the best year ever!