Virtual Classroom Ideas & Activities
I’m so excited to bring you the Winter Survival Guide to your virtual classroom! So grab your homemade latté, snuggle up on your couch across from a roaring fire, and get ready to scroll on through some incredible ideas for you to implement when you get back from Winter break.
These ideas & virtual classroom activities will motivate & excite your learners during online learning this winter … and let’s be honest, we’re going to need all the motivation & excitement we can get!
Virtual Classroom Activities That Get You Moving
In the coming months, our littlest learners may be inside a lot more than they’re used to. Here are some ideas you can implement in your virtual classroom to get them up & moving!
- Freeze Like a Snowman Dance – Get their wiggles out with this version of freeze dance where no one gets “out”. Play winter themed music and when it stops they have to “freeze like a snowman”!
- Winter Scavenger Hunt – Send your students on a winter-themed scavenger hunt through their house to find things like something cold, something blue, something you wear to stay warm. Pro Tip: it works better if you send them to find one thing at a time and then come back to show!
- Charades – Message one of your students with a word relating to winter (ideas like snowman, reindeer, Santa Claus, ice skating, sledding are all fun places to start!) and have them act it out on camera.
Virtual Classroom Community Building Activities
One of the biggest downsides of the virtual classroom is the lack of social interaction. TBH, it breaks my heart when I think about it. Keeping the social aspect of a school is so important, so here are some fun virtual activities to build classroom community this winter.
- Create a Class Winter Story (Mad Libs Style) – Didn’t you just love these when you were a kid? I did! A great way for the kids to laugh & learn at the same time. To create it, write a winter-themed short story about a magical winter wonderland, a gingerbread house, a sledding adventure, or learning how to ice skate (and if you’re feeling void of ideas or time, snag these already done for you templates here) and leave out certain words. Then just like Mad Libs, have students choose words to finish the story and then read the story out loud for a good laugh!
- Winter Themed Show & Tell– If you give the students a seasonal theme for Show & Tell ahead of time, it adds a new element to this classroom favorite. Themes like these can be really fun :
- Holiday news – a photo or souvenir from winter break
- Fuzzy friends – your favorite suffed animal to share
- Favorite holiday or winter book
- Talent Show – Ask your students to share a drawing, song, dance, a Lego creation… anything they’re proud of!
- Winter themed 20 Questions – Think of a winter themed item in your head (like a snowman, snowflake, Christmas lights, or candy cane) and have your students try to guess what you’re thinking of by asking questions.
Virtual Games
Give the kids (and yourself) a short break with these fun virtual games to help break up the day.
- Winter Pictionary – Private message a student with a winter word like (snowman, reindeer, snowflake, sledding, or mittens) and have them draw the image on your virtual whiteboard or on a piece of paper in front of the camera.
- Winter Bingo – I love Bingo because it’s so easy to adjust to practically any theme! You can have them make their own boards on a piece of paper, or you can create boards and have them print them out or use them virtually. Here’s one I love that’s already done for you!
Virtual Classroom : Theme Days
Theme days get almost every student excited. We do not have to sacrifice these fun days just because of virtual school!
- Pajama Party
- Crazy Hair Day
- Winter Wonderland White Out
- Holiday Parties
- Book Parties
- School Spirit Day
- Beach Party in January
But I also love the idea of having each day of the week correspond to different theme.
- Mindful Monday – Each week you can focus on a different aspect of mindfulness, such as breathing, yoga, meditation. I love this short mindfulness “melting” video .
- Think-BIG Tuesday – Carve out five minutes every Tuesday for your learners to work on sharpening a skill that they want to improve. It can be anything important to them from tying to their shoelaces to counting to 100.
- Wellness Wednesday – This day is all about the different aspects of wellness. You can cover a different topic each week … things like emotional well being, nutrition, sleep, hydration.
- Thankful Thursday – My favorite topic: gratitude. Encourage your students to write or draw what they’re thankful for every Thursday, because gratitude truly changes everything! If you’re stumped for how to keep this fresh, here’s a resource with tons of gratitude prompts.
- Fri-yay – Set aside some time for an interactive, engaging FUN Friday activity, like
- a scavenger hunt
- a smile-off (the person who smiles first loses)
- a game of simon says
- virtual rock-paper-scissors tourney
- virtual field trip to the zoo
Using winter-themed templates is such a great way to tie it all together and make things really exciting for your young learners! Bonus is that they’re already made & totally customizable … one less thing for your to do list! If you’re new to google slide templates, check out one of my recent blog post to get the 411 on them.
I hope this will be a powerful resource for elementary-school educators everywhere as we navigate the virtual classroom! We are all in this together, friends! 
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