Epic Classroom Celebrations: More Than Just Fun and Games

Classroom parties are not just about celebrating holidays; they're a powerful tool for building relationships, enhancing social skills, and fostering a positive learning environment. While teachers often celebrate holidays with classroom parties, the benefits extend far beyond those special occasions. Parties can be tied to curriculum, used as rewards, and even boost academic achievement. Doing something fun at school releases feel-good chemicals in the brain, which can make learning more enjoyable for students long after the snacks are eaten and the balloons are thrown away.

The Power of Parties

Classroom parties offer several advantages:

Building Relationships and Social Skills: Parties provide opportunities for students to interact in a relaxed setting, fostering friendships and improving social skills.
Working Toward a Common Goal: Planning and participating in a party can help students learn to collaborate and work together towards a shared objective.
Boosting Academic Achievement: The positive emotions associated with parties can make learning more enjoyable and memorable.

Here are some epic party ideas to get you started.

Party Themes to Spark Joy and Learning

Here are some classroom party ideas that are sure to be a hit with students:

1. Glow Party

Turn off the classroom lights and have some fun with glow in the dark! In addition to fun, you can bring in some academics by practicing sight words made with glow sticks or use glow in the dark beads as math manipulatives. Have the kids wear white t-shirts, add some black light bulbs and music for even more fun. Grab some glow-in-the-dark balloons and glow sticks and get this party started.

2. Pizza Parlor Party

But not just any pizza party - a pizza parlor party! Your students can enjoy a pizza lunch while also practicing restaurant skills. They can practice reading a menu, making a pizza topping choice, and ordering their meal. Bring in a little math by giving the students a budget and having them order a meal within that limit. Decorate the desks with red-checked tablecloths and use pizza-themed tableware to make it extra authentic.

3. Dance Party

This can be a quick 5-minute party idea that doubles as a brain break or a longer party that includes snacks and song requests. However you decide to have this party, you’ll need a disco light and a dance party button!

4. Pajama Party in a Bag

Let’s face it - kids live for pajama day! Turn the day into a party with a PJ party in a bag activity. Fill the bags with snacks, add a book, and you’re ready for an afternoon of lounging in the classroom. Don’t forget your pajamas!

5. Popcorn Party

This is a quick and easy party - just pop a bunch of popcorn (for age-appropriate kids, of course!) and provide some toppings, such as butter, salt, sprinkles, candies, crushed-up cookies, and powered flavorings. Serve the popcorn in authentic boxes and put on a movie for an epic party.

6. Mad Scientist Party

Give your students safety glasses and lab coats and conduct several hands-on science experiments. Mix vinegar with water for a bubbling concoction or make elephant toothpaste with yeast, hydrogen peroxide, and soap. Whatever experiments you include, this party is sure to be a blast.

7. Art Party

Get all the random craft supplies you have and let the kids have at it. They can create anything they can dream up. Extend the fun by having an art show. Invite other classes and parents to come view the masterpieces.

8. Caramel Apple (or Frozen Yogurt) Bar

Celebrate the start of fall or all the things your students are thankful for with a DIY caramel apple bar. Apples and premade caramel are a must, but let kids customize their apple with mini chocolate chips, sprinkles, and whipped cream. Tip: Slice the apples ahead of time to make it easier for your students to eat them. Send leftovers home in these cut apple-shaped containers. You can also change this party up by having a frozen yogurt bar instead.

9. Bubble Party

Make bubble wands, blow bubbles, and chew bubble gum at this epic party. Have a bubble-blowing challenge with gum or see who can blow the most bubbles with one breath.

10. Movie Party

This is a classic party idea for classrooms across the country, but for a good reason. Kids love the chance to watch a “just for fun” movie at school. Prepare a rolling cart full of delicious movie snacks and let the show begin.

11. Out With a Bang Party

This is a great theme for the New Year or the end of the school year. Collect as many items that make a sound, head outside, and make a bang! Balloons, slapping sticky hands, and popcorn are some inexpensive things to get you started. This party is also an educational way to learn more about the science behind sound.

Read also: Understanding Student Loans

12. Slime Party

This is a great opportunity for your students to get messy. Provide premade slime and a huge supply of things for students to mix into their slime to customize their mess. Novelty erasers, googly eyes, beads, and glitter are some easy mix-ins.

13. Painting Party

Set up a few canvases, fill palettes with washable paint, and encourage your little artists to create something beautiful. This is a great way for art teachers to end the school year.

Celebrating Milestones: The 100th Day of School

Parties are the perfect way to celebrate big wins in the classroom. The 100th day of school is a huge deal in kindergarten! The students have worked hard to learn how to count to 100 and it is now time to celebrate!

Here are some ideas for celebrating the 100th day of school:

Decorate the classroom: Decorate the desks with confetti and a special treat and award waiting for them.
Treats: Use the mini-doughnut treat with a wafer cookie to represent the number 100. Place them in a Ziploc bag with a treat bag topper that says “Donut” you know it’s the 100th Day of School? You have learned a “hole” bunch!”. Place a wafer cookie along with 2 fudge stripe cookies in a baggie and attach a “Happy 100th Day! You’re a smart cookie!” treat bag topper.
Mascot: Have a spotted Dalmatian named Spot as the official 100th Day mascot.
Crowns: Allow students to decorate their own crowns. Copy the crown template onto cardstock, have students color and/or write on it, and then attach and size the strip to fit their heads.
Technology Activity: Use the free AgingBooth app to create a “When I am 100 years old” writing activity. Take a picture of each student prior to the 100th day of school. Then use the free AgingBooth app to make students look older and save the pictures. Have students upload their photos to Chatter Pix Kids and record what they think they will be doing when they are 100 years old.
100 Chart Activities:
- Call out the numbers in random order and the students have to find each number on their 100 charts and color them in.
- Students estimate how many rolls of the dice they think it will take to reach 100 and write it at the top of the page. Then they roll the dice and color in the correct number of squares on the 100 chart using a different color crayon each time.
- Cut up a 100 chart into puzzle pieces and have students put it back together again for fun number sequencing practice.
Hidden Pictures: Students search for hidden pictures and work to find 100 objects total. Have students circle each type of object using a different color.
Writing Activity: Show students the following sentence starters - I would like to have 100… , I would not like to have 100…. Discuss it as a group along with some possible answers then students made their own versions in Pic Kids. They typed in each sentence starter and then searched for pictures to complete each one.
Trail Mix Snack: Each student is responsible for bring in exactly 100 pieces of their ingredient for our trail mix (M&Ms, Cheerios, mini-pretzels, Chex cereal, Goldfish crackers, mini-marshmallows, raisins, chocolate chips, popcorn).
Healthy Snack: a baby carrot and 2 cucumber slices to resemble the number 100. Place them in snack bags with the topper “Hip Hip Hooray!
100 Second Challenges: Before each challenge, students make a prediction about how many times they think they can complete the task in 100 seconds. Then, set the timer and let them try it out. After time is up, students count their results and compare them to their prediction.
Silence Challenge: See if they can be completely silent for 100 seconds!
$100 Bill Activity: Students love seeing their face on $100 bills! You can create these free at PhotoFunia.com.
Guessing Game: Set out 3 containers with candy and only fill one of them with exactly 100 candies. Have students guess which container they think has exactly 100 candies in it. Record their guesses.
Candy Art: Students count out 100 candy-coated chocolates (M&Ms, Skittles, or jelly beans work great). Counting by tens makes this a perfect math warm-up before the experiment even begins. Once students have their 100 candies, they arrange them on a large white dish or pan to create a shape or design. Next, slowly pour very warm water down the side of the dish (this is a teacher job!), being careful not to move the candies. As the warm water touches the candy, the colored sugar coating begins to dissolve and the colors spread through the water, creating the prettiest patterns.
Paper Chain: Before creating paper chain, have students estimate how long they think a 100 link paper chain will be. Take them out in the hallway and show them where we will place the beginning of it and then have them go stand where they feel the chain will end. Give them each a piece of masking tape to mark their spot and they write their names on it. Then, split up into groups. Each group gets strips of paper with numbers on them and they must put them in order and link them together.
Treats to take home: Give students a little something special to take home to commemorate the special celebration.
- 100 Days Smarter Treat Tag and Certificate - The students always enjoy getting Smarties candy for being 100 days smarter - they think it is funny. Pair it with this special certificate that students can keep for years to come.
- You are Worth More Than 100 Grand Treat and Tag - Since the name of this candy bar goes with our 100 days party theme I had to use it as a treat!
- You are 100 Days Brighter Glow Stick - This is another non-candy favorite treat idea.

Addressing Common Classroom Challenges: The Case of the Missing Pen and More

This is one of those seemingly unimportant management issues which is often swept under the carpet by a teacher who is frantically trying to concentrate efforts on more serious issues. In a lively class, when you’ve got Mary and Matilda cat fighting, Liam smoking, Carl spitting on Graham, Steven chucking text books at Johnny, and Paul making lewd comments about the support assistant’s chest - all at the same time - it’s easy just to hand a spare pen to Kyle who’s forgotten his. After all, there’s no need to get in a lather over the small stuff. Is there?

One reason we should be at least a little concerned about Kyle’s missing pen is that seemingly trivial things like this can easily trip up the most well-prepared classroom manager if they get out of hand.

Why?

Because whatever you allow to happen in class, you effectively encourage.

Every time you hand over a pen from your dwindling pile of spares you effectively train your little angels in the belief that it’s perfectly acceptable to come to class without one. So before long, they’re all at it. Suddenly, one pen becomes thirty-five, you spend half the lesson handing pens out like sweeties and you’re left with a handful of chewed, gunky biros and a group of kids who couldn’t give two hoots about coming to class prepared!

The bottom line is that you need to minimise the number of excuses that students will invent for not starting work. Let’s face it, not having a pen is a great excuse to avoid transferring words on to paper; not having a ruler is a great excuse to avoid measuring or drawing straight lines; not having coloured pens means you can’t finish your illustrations, and not having a drawing compass makes it absolutely impossible to draw circles (and to give the student in front of you impromptu body piercings).

The more time you spend sourcing, fetching, carrying and monitoring equipment and resources (you do keep a record of items you lend out don’t you?) the more stressful your lessons will be, the less time you’ll have to support and manage your students, and the more dependent they will become. That’s before we take into account valuable textbooks and exercise books which are taken home for the dog to chew and which are never seen again. Let’s get on top of this issue and make life easier for everyone.

Strategies for Managing Student Preparedness

Here are eight classroom management strategies for dealing with it:

1. Keep Textbooks and Exercise Books in Your Room

I’m sure there is some complex mathematical formula to explain the relationship between a student’s general classroom behaviour and the likelihood that he or she will return a book once it has been taken home - but since Stephen Hawking isn’t available to explain it, let’s just say that with a challenging group it’s ‘not very likely at all’. And it causes huge problems.

I remember being pretty lax when it came to taking my own exercise books home as a student - they just seemed to disappear once they entered the depths of my school bag, never to be seen again. I had a new exercise book in some lessons almost every week - so by the end of term there were hundreds of little books with ‘Robert Plevin’ labels on them lying round in uncharted places, each containing about three pages of work. Maybe it’s just (disorganised) boys but it’s a problem which needs solving if you, as a teacher, don’t want all your lessons turned upside down with cries of “Miss, I need a new book”.

Your best bet is not to let them take them home in the first place. Store exercise books on a dedicated class shelf. Yes, I know you have to set homework but there’s nothing wrong with giving them a separate homework folder/book/file specifically for homework. Never send textbooks home - that’s what photocopiers are for.

2. Pens and Other Equipment - Offer Collateral

Offer to lend them some of your equipment in return for ‘collateral’ such as a shoe. Like all the strategies in this resource, there are going to be some which you don’t feel comfortable about using. This is probably one of them purely because it can get very smelly in a hot classroom when half the students are minus their full complement of footwear.

Having said that, it is a very effective way of making sure you get your equipment back at the end of the lesson; nobody likes having to hop home (though now I come to think of it, I do still have a large collection of odd Woolworths plastic trainers; for some reason they seemed to think a new HB pencil was a fair swap).

3. Encourage Peer Borrowing

This is preferable to having to continually give out materials from your own stocks. Give a brief period of time at the start of the lesson for students to borrow items from other members of the class - but be prepared to change strategy if they start removing each other’s shoes.

4. Positive Reinforcement

There are two ways to tackle any classroom situation - reward behaviour when it’s positive, or punish when it’s inappropriate. Rather than focusing on students who don’t bring equipment it might be better to reward those who do, with spontaneous light-hearted treats (such as a garishly decorated plastic pen, or an antique Woolworths training shoe).

5. Teach Responsibility

This is my personal favourite. I’m a big fan of methods which develop independence - give a man a fish and all that - and the better you can lead your students towards becoming responsible, the easier (and more meaningful) your job will be. Give them a checklist to take home and fill in every morning with items they should bring to school. Then show them how to use the checklist as a memory aid - “have a quick look through it in a morning and check off items as you add them to their bag.”

6. Parental Involvement

Inform parents that this key issue is causing great concern - explain how it is impacting on the child’s progress in other lessons and its importance as a life/ employment skill. You could also mention that unorganised teenagers tend to lack the ability to move out of the parental home and often end up living there well into their thirties - that’s a great parental attention-grabber. Show them the checklist you’ve created and ask them to remind the student each morning/evening to use it.

7. Be Prepared

Always have a complete box of materials and equipment on your desk - your ‘Resource Box’. Cut out the tendency for students to keep/borrow/forget to give back/steal your materials by having them clearly and boldly marked. Pink nail varnish tends to be a good deterrent if you’re lending materials to Johnny and his pals.

8. Keep a Clear Record

A great way to impress students with the impact of their actions is to give them a clear picture of how significant a particular problem is. A chart provides a clear record, for both teacher and student, of how many times materials have been forgotten. It also gives a definite starting point from which to improve:

“Jonny, you have forgotten your materials every day this week. Let’s see if we can get one positive mark on the chart tomorrow, shall we? What are you going to do to make that happen?”

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