15 More Ways to Make Learning Fun!

Are you looking for ways to amp up the fun factor in your classroom?  If so, then you're going to love this list of 15 easy ways to make learning FUN!  

1.  Set up stations of food like grapes, carrots, and graham crackers and task students to write a five senses poem describing how each food looks, tastes, feels, smells, and sounds.

2.  Play music in your classroom while students work.  Or, have students rewrite music lyrics in response to a reading passage.  You could even have students design playlists for characters or novels.

3.  Tap into the sense of touch with shaving cream.  Have students spread out some foam shaving cream on their desks and then challenge them to spell out words from their spelling list.  Or ask students multiple choice questions and they can write "A, B, C or D" in the shaving cream.

4.  Use pictures to inspire writing.  Display interesting pictures from National Geographic and use them as a springboard for a writing prompt.  Or collect a bunch of pictures of different houses around the world.  Then, challenge students to describe their houses.  Finally, post the pictures around the room and have classmates guess which house each student wrote about as he or she reads the description out loud.

5.  Bring in the candy.  Perhaps not the healthiest idea, but candy is an instant learning motivator.  Hand out a snack-size pack of m&m's to kids and have them write a persuasive advertisement. Or, around Valentine's Day, hand out conversation hearts that students need to incorporate into a letter.

6.  Collect a set of fun review games that you can play if a lesson ends early.  Games like Stump the Student where students create questions about the day's lesson that they think will challenge their classmates are especially fun.  Find a set of 12 lesson extenders HERE.

7.  Play hot potato as an anticipatory set or closure of a lesson. Just have students stand in a circle.  Then, give them an item to pass around (this is the hot potato).  Pose a question to a student and then she has until the object makes it back to her to answer it correctly.  If she doesn't know the answer, she can ask a classmate for help.

8.  Get students playing charades to teach and review all kinds of concepts.  Students can play emotion charades to learn about making inferences.  Or, students can play charades with quotes or plot events from a story.

9.  Play bingo!  Pass out a blank bingo card to students and have them fill them in using words from a word bank that you provide.  The word bank can be based on any unit of study or vocabulary list.  Then, call out clues for each word.  When students cross out five words in a row they win!

10.  Get improvisational!  Students love playing improvisational theater games, and many are adaptable to reviewing and teaching classroom concepts.  For instance, students could play Party Quirks based on characters from a novel they are reading.  Or, students could by Hitchhiker based on vocabulary words.

Here's my son putting together food packs for Stop Hunger Now at his school

11.  Remind students that there is a world outside of the classroom by involving students in community service projects like Stop Hunger Now.

12.  Set up pen pals with a classroom in another town, state, or country.  You could even have students write to younger students in your own school district.

13.  Have students write letters to the men and women who serve in the military through programs like Operation Gratitude. Students' letters are included in care packages to deployed troops, new recruits, veterans, and wounded heroes.

14.  Play a global guessing game with Skpe in the Classroom's Mystery Skype.

15.  Set up Google Hangouts or Skpe sessions with guest speakers.  Imagine giving students an opportunity to interview an author or a classroom of students located somewhere else in the world.

BONUS! - Infuse creative writing lessons into your instruction! Students love the opportunity to write creatively. Make it a habit to give students a chance to flex their creative writing muscles. Challenge them to write a 6-sentence passage without repeating a word. Or, have students write one sentence at a time in a small group. The options are endless and they all making writing and learning FUN! Click here to receive a set of 5 activities instantly!

If you missed the first set of 15 ways to make learning fun, you can find them HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mary Beth