Early Morning Activities KS1

Early Morning Word Games

Early morning activity time is a great way to help consolidate new vocabulary, practise spelling skills or just have fun with words! Here are some ideas for early morning word games for KS1 children:

• Display a set of words on the board that all have the same letter missing. For example, you could display the words 'th_r_ - ', 'tr_ _', 'h_n' and 's_cr_t' and children have to identify the missing letter (e).
• Jumble up the words to that week's spelling or vocabulary related to a topic you are studying and challenge children to unjumble the letters to reveal the words.
• Display a word or words from a topic you are studying and challenge children to find as many words as they can using letters from the word. For example, from the word 'dinosaur' children could spell the words 'sand', 'sad', 'rod' and 'undo'.
• Create a word search of the week's spellings for children to complete, or provide a word search related to a topic being studied.
• Provide a set of words relating to a topic you are studying (or your weekly spellings) and ask children to put them into alphabetical order. You could also use this Alphabetical Order KS1 Puzzle.

Early Morning Number Games

We all know how having a firm grip on the basics of Maths will help your KS1 class thrive in their Maths learning. Use your early morning activity time to help hone their skills with these fun activities:

• Display three or four different numbers and ask children to decide which is the odd one out. There may or may not be a right or wrong answer to this; the important part is getting children to consider the numbers' properties.
• Challenge them to improve their times table knowledge by testing each other with the times tables they need to work on. These Multiplication Wheels are a great way of doing this. Just cut them out, stick together then lift the flaps to see if your answers are correct!
• Display a number on the board. If this is the answer, what was the question? Challenge children to find as many questions for the answer as they can.
• Put some sets of coins on the children's tables (you can use these free cut-out coins) and display an amount on the board. How many different ways can you make this amount with your coins?

Early Morning Art Activities

• Colouring can be a great, calm way to start the morning. Try these Alphabet Colouring Pages; each one has a letter of the alphabet to colour, then space to list as many things as they can think of starting with that letter.
• Put some playdough on children's tables and challenge them to create models based on what they are currently learning about. For example, they could create playdough mini-beasts, Tudor houses, foods or even number sentences.
• Provide children with different types of pencils (e.g. HB, 2B, 2H) and give them some time to explore the different marks they can make with them. Which would be best for drawing fluffy clouds? Which would be best for drawing an apple? Alternatively, provide an object for children to sketch.

Early Morning Brain Teasers

Working through a fun puzzle is a wonderful way to fire up their brains first thing in the morning! We've put together a selection of brain teaser packs linked to common KS1 topics so you have a vast library of ready-to-go brain teasers to pop up on the board. Some of our most popular ones include:

• Castles Brain Teasers
• Travel and Transport Brain Teasers
• All About Me Brain Teasers

More Early Morning Activity Ideas

• Handwriting Practise: Help children understand letter formation by playing an example of letter formation on loop. Writing Repeater is a good way of doing this.
• Secret Sentences Puzzles: Practise identifying initial sounds by creating a secret code whereby children write the first letter of each picture to reveal a sentence. Try these free Secret Sentences or Secret Words puzzles to get you started.
• Animal Answers: Display a photo of an animal on the board and challenge each child to write three facts about the animal in full sentences. They then pass this over to a friend who has to write what they think the question could be if the fact was the answer.
• Mood Checker: Encourage children to check in with how they're feeling in the morning by asking them to draw a face that matches how they are feeling. They could also add words or pictures around the face to express more about their mood. Encourage children to share their feelings with a partner or in small groups, and think about how they can make anyone who isn't feeling happy feel better.