Last Week of School Activities That Aren't Just Another Movie
Mrs Edgar · From the Classroom
The last week of the school year has a particular energy. The reports are done, the display boards are half down, and your class has mentally left the building. You don't need a new unit. You need a week that is calm, a little bit special, and still has something worth doing in it.
The default answer is a movie every afternoon. It works, but it isn't the only option. Here is a day-by-day plan that keeps the room settled, sends every child home with something to keep, and needs almost no prep on your side.
Monday
The games day
Screen-free, quiet-ish, and nobody needs it explained twice.
Start the week with the classics. Battleships, Dots and Boxes, Tic Tac Toe and Categories need nothing but a pencil and a partner, and the how-to-play is on every page, so you are not the one explaining the rules to twenty-five children at once.
Set it up as stations
15 minutes eachPrint a few copies of each game and run them as rotating stations. Pairs move on when the timer goes. It is the easiest way to keep a restless class moving without it turning into chaos.
Keep a stack for fast finishers
Whatever is left on Monday becomes the early-finisher tray for the rest of the week. You will be surprised how often it gets used.
The Pencil + Paper Games pack is free and has all of these, plus a make-your-own wordsearch, a tangram and a blank board-game template. If you would like Sudoku and Finish the Drawing in the mix too, the End of Term Pack bundles all three.
Tuesday
Memories
The one activity that is a keepsake as well as a time-filler.
By Tuesday the class is ready to look back. An end-of-year reflection gives every student a reason to think about the highlights, the friendships and the things they are proud of, and it gives you something genuinely worthwhile to point to when someone asks what you did in the last week.
Share before they write
10 minutesStart with a circle. Each child shares one favourite moment from the year. The writing is easier and warmer after that, and you will hear a few things you had forgotten yourself.
Let it be a keepsake
Send the finished page home as it is, or staple the class's pages into a simple memory book. Families tend to keep these.
The End Of Year Memories activity is a printable page for exactly this, and it works from Foundation through to Year 6.
Wednesday
A Christmas craft
One make, one session, one display.
Midweek is the right moment for a craft, because it uses up a long stretch of the day and leaves you with a display for the corridor. Pick one and give it the whole session rather than squeezing in three.
If you want maths in it
The Christmas tree craftivity hides times tables facts inside the decoration, so the craft is still doing some work. It is one of the few December crafts where a wrong answer shows. You can get the Christmas Tree Multiplication Craftivity and print it today.
If you want a countdown
Running a classroom advent calendar? Wednesday is a good day to open a double door and use the craft as the task.
There is plenty more in the Christmas digital collection if you want to choose something else.
Thursday
Tidy and celebrate
Half the room gets cleaned out, half the room gets a party.
Thursday is the practical day. Tubs get emptied, desks get wiped and lost property gets returned, so keep it fun: put a timer on, play some music, and make a game of it. Our end-of-year organising tips cover the teacher side of the pack-up.
Keep the party small
calm beats bigA class celebration works best when it is short and has a shape: certificates, a read-aloud, a few games. Open-ended free time is where it tends to go sideways.
Friday
The goodbye
Short, warm, and not a scramble.
Finish the week with something that closes the year properly. A last circle, a note to next year's class, or a letter to their future selves all work, and none of them take more than twenty minutes. Then hand out a small something to take home, and let the bell do the rest.
Send something home for the holidays
Parents ask every year what to do with the holidays. The free Ultimate Christmas Handbook is a 30-page printable guide with party ideas, kids' activity stations, an age-by-age movie list and 25+ elf ideas. Pop a link or a printed page in the take-home folder and families have a head start.
Spare ten minutes? Brain breaks.
For the odd gap at the end of a long day, our brain break ideas are quick, quiet and need no prep.
The actual trick
Plan it on Sunday night
The difference between a calm last week and a chaotic one is about fifteen minutes of printing the weekend before. Steal this list:
Fifteen minutes of printing, five calm days.
Print on Sunday, play on Monday, and let the rest of the week unfold from there.
Nearly there, teachers.
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