Getting to know you, back to school activity?

Executive Member Joined: May 26 2006 Posts: 415

Anyone have a good back to school, getting to know you, warmup excercises?
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For what age?
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Platinum Member Joined: Jun 30 2009 Posts: 8233

In the past I have Googled "getting to know you activities" and have found many teachers' websites with such activities.
One idea I remember is passing around a roll of toilet paper (or if they will laugh and be immature, it can be cheerios) and tell each kid to take as many as they will need. They will have no clue what it's for, so each one will take a different amount. Then go around and each kid has to say one fact about himself for each piece of paper/Cheerio.
This was only one from on top of my head, there are lots out there!
G'luck...

Diamond Member Joined: Apr 27 2006 Age: 30 Posts: 2537

in college, we stood in a circle and threw a ball to another person. before throwing, we had to say our name and then the person's name we were throwing it to. this helped everyone learn each other's name.

Gold Member Joined: Jul 06 2009 Age: 26 Posts: 1174

I echo seraph's question on the age, and add- do the kids already know each other?

Every year we would fill a paper with name, age, adress, hobbies, etc, for the teacher.
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Diamond Member Joined: Nov 10 2005 Posts: 3401

Last year, as an opening activity in Hebrew School, we started with a questionnaire that they each had to fill out with questions like "which student has only brothers?," which student went on a trip to ________" and this way they each got to get used to their friends' Hebrew names and get to know other kids from other schools. It was also great for the more shy kids who happened to be the only one who spent the summer in Israel or whatever since they got tons of positive attention!

Executive Member Joined: May 26 2006 Posts: 415

They are middle school age, those activities sound fun...

Silver Member Joined: Dec 23 2007 Posts: 732

I do a getting to know you activity called Human Bingo. Instead of filling up the page with Who Has...? I create it as a bingo card and the kids try to find other children who... If you pm me, I could attach the one I made so you could get an idea. Another thing I plan on doing this year is using puzzlemaker.com and creating a wordsearch of names of the kids in the class.