BEST FIRST Day Activity! Teamwork!

I wanted something engaging and exciting the first day of school! We really emphasize working together and supporting all of our class so an activity that showed that the first day was ideal.

I briefly saw the scratch off technique while browsing through Pinterest and I've used it before on cards I've made and such but not in school. My next step was to create a banner - I just used triangle shapes and circles then kept copying and pasting in Powerpoint to make it.

1. Banner printed. I made a phrase that has 22 letters for how many students I have this year.

2. put a piece of clear tape over each letter

3. mix paint (any color): 2 parts paint, 1 part dish soap and paint on

4. I really only needed 2 coats and some touch up to fully cover the letters

5. Hide around room or tape under chairs.

Here are some pictures of the steps I took along the way - from my Insta story - @sssteaching

**sidenote** I planned to put a little dot on the letters of first words to help out since I didn't really want this taking a LONG time and since the whole class would be working together, but I forgot. On the banner I wrote how many letters were in each word (hangman style) so hopefully that helps them solve it faster)

The poem below was what I had displayed on the board after explaining class rules and how our class works. Since teamwork is a major part of any classroom community I asked if they were ready for their first teamwork challenge?!

I read the poem once and under their seats took no time at all!

Scratching off the letters took no time at all!

Putting together the puzzle was the trickiest part. I labeled the black paper to show how many letters were in each word and it proved to be the perfect clue!

I did give them the first letter of first word and told them when they got it right - from then on .... it was all them! It only took about 5 min and they worked great together. Next year - I might do 2 puzzles (color coded) just so each person can help more since 21 working together is a little bit tricky.

Our finished product - we received Tootsie pops to eat while we discussed books from our summer and moved on to other first day activities! It went so well. The scratch off letters were a great pay off!