20 Back to School Games Your Students Will Love - Virtual Escape Rooms (2024)

Get ready to start the year with a new, fun and FREE virtual escape room. In “Escape the Classroom” your students are locked in (virtually, of course), and the only way out is by solving challenges and cracking clues.

It’s a race against the clock to solve the puzzles and find that elusive 4-digit codeto freedom.

Setup: Give each student a headband and a game card with a back to school related vocabulary word. The card should be placed in the headband, or held against their forehead, so that the student cannot see it, but their classmates can.

Objective: The goal is for each student to guess what’s on their card by asking yes-or-no questions. Once students know how to play you can use this game withvocabulary words related to your current curriculum.

Everyone knows how to play rock paper scissors. And even if they don’t it’s easy to learn. This is a fun twist on the classic game of rock paper scissors. It turns this simple game into an exciting tournament that will have your class cheering!

Getthe rules and instructions on how to play.Icebreaker: Rock Paper Scissors Extreme from Guide Inc.

This one is one of the most loved team building activities among students!Divide your class into teams and have them take turns drawing pictures while their teammates try to guess what they are drawing. You can have the word list be anything but making it school related, like supplies or different locations, makes it especially perfect for back to school.

You can use thisRandom Word Generatorto generate random words for your own Pictionary game or use our Pictionary game cards to play a fast and easygame with your class.

Classmate Bingo is a spin on your typical Bingo game. Prior to the activity have students share a few facts about themselves on an index card with their name on it. Create bingo cards with students’ names in each square. You can useCanva’s Bingo Card Generatorto create a unique card for each student. Read a fact from the index card and have students guess who it is.

The first few times you play be sure to tell them who the facts are about so they can mark off the name on their card. If you play more than once you can rely on students to remember the facts about their classmates as you play.

In this activity the objective is to flip a tarp so that the side touching the ground and the side being stood upon are reversed. The catch is that everyone on the team is standing on the tarp and can’t step off. To play all team members stand on a flat tarp (or blanket) and they must flip over the tarp so that they are standing on the other side without stepping off or touching the ground.

Get detailed directions, pictures and a video of this activity atFit Kids Healthy KidsfromSportmanitoba.ca.

A classroom scavenger hunt is a fun, interactive activity where students search for specific items or information within the classroom or school grounds.

You can easily create your own in Google Slides or edit one of thesescavenger hunt templates in Canva.

Don’t want to create your own? Download the PDF version of our classroom scavenger hunt to print and use with your students.

With Flippity’s “skip the spreadsheet” option you can input your class roster into their site and create some fun customized games for your class. Here’s how:

1. Go to Flippity.net/WordSearch.htm

2. Choose Option 1: Quick & Easy

3. Delete the list of name

4. Paste your class roster (separate each name with a comma or line breaks)

5. Create a title then click “Generate”

This activity is not only engaging but also serves as a great icebreaker and community-building exercise. It can be tailored to any age group and can be made more complex by including more detailed clues or using a theme related to what you’re teaching. Plus, it’s a creative way to integrate technology into the classroom!

Here’s how to do it:

Interest Inventory: Begin by having each student complete an interest inventory. This can be a simple questionnaire where students list their favorite hobbies, books, movies, sports, etc.

Connectionsis a puzzle game where players have to find four groups of four items that share something in common fromThe New York Times.

Here’s how it works:

Objective: Group 16 words into four mystery categories.

The “Spell Your Name” workout, created by Kimberly Grabinski, is a fun fitness challenge where students spell out the full name of a classmate and complete a specific exercise for each letter. It offers a variety of exercises ranging from jumping jacks to squats.

There are three versions to choose from, beginner, advanced and a kid-friendly version with activities like jumping up and down or spinning in circles, making it a fun way to engage in physical activity.

Blooket is a gamification tool that helps students learn and review concepts through different types of game modes with an element of competition. Teachers can create their own question sets or use sets created by other educators, and students can play games like Tower Defense, Monster Brawl, Crazy Kingdom and more.

Playing a fun and easy Back to School Blooket game like the one I created below is a great way to welcome your students back to class while introducing a fun tool you can use for class content review later!

Create a quiz about yourself and let students guess the answer with a fun Kahoot all about the teacher. You can create and share your own “All About Me!” video to introduce yourself and give students the answers before the quiz.

How to create a Kahoot! tutorial video

This “Back to school Kahoot Ice Breaker Kit” provides more creative ideas to use Kahoot! as an icebreaker at the start of the school year.

Materials: A bowl of cotton balls, a spoon, and an empty bowl per player/team.

Directions: Blindfolded, or with their eyes closed, players must transfer cotton balls from one bowl to another using a spoon within one minute. The player or team that gets the most cotton balls transferred wins.

Alternate way to play: Have multiple options for moving cotton balls from one bowl to the other. Chopsticks, spoons, tongs, ladles. Let teams decide which one they want to use as they strategies. This is a great way to talk about adaptations like bird beaks and which are most beneficial for different reasons.

Materials: 36 Solo Cups per player.Get 16 cups for $1.25 at the Dollar Tree

Directions: Each player must stack a pyramid of cups (base of 8) and then deconstruct it back into a single stack. First to complete within one minute wins.

Alternate way to play: Have teams of students and one set of cups per team. Each team member must stack a pyramid of cups then deconstruct it before tagging the next team member in. The first team to have each member finish wins.

Materials: A bag of alphabet pasta and a bowl per player.

Directions: Players must spell as many words as they can from the pasta within one minute.

Alternate way to play: Assign points per letter so that longer words are worth more points. 3 letter words = 2 points, 4 letter words = 4 points and so on.

Materials: A bag of M&Ms and a set of small bowls.

Directions: Players sort M&Ms by color into separate bowls within one minute.

Alternate way to play: Add in some Skittles that do not get sorted. Discuss why this makes the game so much harder and how this applies to camouflage out in nature.

Materials: A deck of cards per player.

Directions: One team is “Builders” and the others is “Destroyers”. Builders work to turn the cards face up and destroyers word to turn the cards face down. The team that has the most cards facing their way in one minute wins.

This free activity pack includes 11 back to school games and puzzles to use with your class.

The pack includes secret messages, word searches, crossword puzzles, and more to kick off your school year.