Early Morning Activities KS2

Early Morning Word Games

Early morning activity time is a great time to reinforce vocabulary related to a topic being studied, new spellings or unusual words to help develop their lexicon.

• Display a word from a topic, such as 'prehistoric', 'rainforest' or 'earthquake', and challenge children to find as many words as they can using the letters from that word. In 'prehistoric', for example, children could find the words 'store', 'rich', 'ship' and 'hope'. If your class are a competitive bunch, assign points for each word found and see who can score the highest.
• Display a new word and three possible definitions. Which is the correct one? Can you use the word in a sentence?
• Display a word and ask children to find as many synonyms as they can for that word. To make this more challenging, assign a point for each synonym a child finds that no one else has thought of.
• Create a word search of the week's spellings for children to complete, or provide a word search related to a topic being studied.
• Jumble up the letters from your week's spellings, or from whichever vocabulary you are focussing on, and challenge children to unjumble the letters to reveal the words, like this Countries of the World anagram sheet.

Early Morning Number Games

We all know how having a firm grip on the basics of Maths will help your KS2 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.
• Help them consolidate their multiplication and division facts with games such as this Division Decisions Game or this Make a Square Multiplication Game.
• 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.
• Provide sudoku or futoshiki puzzles for your class to work through.  

Early Morning Art Activities

• Mindfulness colouring can be a great way to get your class of to a calm start for the day.
• Display a famous piece of art on the board and encourage children to ask questions about it and respond to how it makes them feel, and what they notice about the piece. This Artwork of the Day FreeBee includes many noteworthy works of art for your KS2 children to consider.

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 KS2 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:

• Rainforest Brain Teasers
• Ancient Egyptians Brain Teasers
• Victorians Brain Teasers
• Vikings Brain Teasers
• Countries of the World Brain Teasers

More Early Morning Activity Ideas

• Caption Challenge: display a photo or illustration on the board and challenge each child to come up with a caption for the picture. As an extension, encourage children to write a newspaper article for their captioned picture.
• Knowledge Shower: display a question on the board, e.g. What do you know about zebras/World War I/trees? Children to write this question in the middle of a sheet of paper or mini-whiteboard and scatter any facts they know about the subject around the question.
• Describe an Emotion: give children a particular emotion, such as anger, joy, confusion, frustration, and ask them to describe it in as much detail as they can. What does this emotion feel like? How can you recognise this emotion in someone else? What is it like to experience this emotion? Children can respond in words or pictures.
• Learn the Lyrics: display or print off the lyrics to a song and challenge children to learn the lyrics so that they can sing along without the words once their time is up.