Brain Breaks

ellaflitcroft

Musical Plates…

  • Students spread out around the classroom
  • Give each student 2 paper plates
  • Play a song and instruct them to follow along with the teacher while teacher does different movements like rubbing the plates together, clapping the plates together etc.

Hand Squeezing…

  • Students stand in a circle and hold hands. Starting with the teacher, they squeeze the hand to the person on their right, and that person squeezes the hand of the person on their right and so on until it makes it back to the teacher
  • This mimics an electric current
  • You could do this with multiple currents going in multiple directions

Math Partners…

  • Have the students pair up
  • Demonstrate to the class with a parter- say out loud “one, two, three go” then on go each parter holds up a number of fingers- from one hand only (1,2,3,4, or 5 fingers) and the students have to add their own fingers with their parters (parter A holds up 2 fingers, partner B holds 4 fingers, the first partner to say 6 wins that round)
  • Do this for a few rounds with addition
  • This can also be done with multiplication and subtraction (higher number removes lower number)

Alphabet Sounds…

  • Led by teacher with student response
  • Go through the alphabet, saying a letter and making a sound that starts with that letter
  • Example. A) Ahhhhhh B) Booooo
  • Allow students to do this with partners or as a large class group

Freeze Like…

  • Students mill around the room.
  • Teacher calls our “freeze like (teachers name)” and the teacher strikes a pose. All students freeze and imitate the pose
  • Teacher chooses a new person who will strike the next pose, and everyone resumes milling
  • Can be repeated many times to give each person a turn

Sky Gifts…

  • Instruct students to imagine something they would like to have fall out of the sky.
  • Everyone mills around their class while “catching” their own imaginary objects.
  • Students should catch many different objects over the time given.
  • If you catch something heavy, you need to act like it is heavy

Blanket Transformation…

  • Students sit in a circle
  • Teacher puts a blanket on the floor in the middle of the circle
  • Teacher acts out as if he is using the blanket as a toboggan to go down a hill
  • Students get up as they choose, not forced, and they can act out the blanket as a different object (carpet, roll it up and hold it like a baby etc.)

Jacket Animals…

  • Pair students up
  • Ensure one of the students in their pair has a jacket or a hoodie as a prop (they can use their own)
  • Tell the students to make their jacket look like an animal (lay it down like a snake, wrap the sleeves like a sloth etc.)
  • Once all students are done, have them do a gallery walk- one student from the pair stays at their jacket animal, and the other walks around and guesses what their classmates created
  • Switch roles, other student stays, other student walks around

Same Card…

  • Have all the students sit in chairs half the students on one side half the students on the other side
  • Put a card in front of each student face down and tell the students not to look at it
  • Pick a card from the deck and show it to the class, tell the students that whoever has the matching card is the lucky one
  • But realistically, all the cards are the same, this allows all the students to feel special