The Best Morning Meeting Activity For Elementary Students
Your students will LOVE this morning meeting activity with baby animals
Morning meetings set the pace for elementary classrooms. They can loosely follow an outline, or adhere to a strict schedule. No matter how your morning meetings are run, I have found a morning meeting activity for elementary students that works to grab attention, spark conversation, and engages kids all day!
Baby animal facts are super motivating for elementary students!
In my first year of teaching I learned that my students were highly motivated by cute baby animals
My favorite morning meeting activity can work for any elementary age. I started this routine when I was teaching a split class of kindergarten and first grade but now that I’m teaching fifth grade, my students love it too! My first year teaching, I read some random article about how looking at pictures of cute baby animals would extend your life by seven years if you did it every day. At the time I thought, “Wow, that's easy! I love baby animals!” Baby animals are so cute to look at. Who doesn't love them? This motivated me to do a little bit more research and there's a lot to say about baby animals and how they help us release dopamine in the brain when we look at them. We also know that having a pet will make you live longer too, so why not look at a cute baby animal every day? One of the biggest reasons I fell in love with Pomeranians, like my little guy Woobie, is because he's so adorable, and he’ll look like a puppy for the rest of his life. I found out that this was very motivating for my students, and it turned into an everyday morning meeting activity. A lot of times I would just have the teacher helper pick the animal that day because they love having choice. I later moved on to having 180 days planned out of cute baby animals so that I could have it just very focused and get to it. I even made my own Google slides so that I could have a baby animal that's different every day. If you’re anything like me, you want to have the whole school year planned out, and my baby animal slides come with 2 facts per animal!
Improve your students’ focus with cute baby animal daily facts and pictures!
Looking at cute baby animals can improve your students’ focus
Looking at a baby animal has been proven to help us live longer and it's also been proven by a few studies that I read to increase your students’ focus. Your kiddos might get really excited when they see something cute so just remember to have rules in place that there’s no screaming. I always say “It’s okay to say “Aww!” but it’s not okay to be out of control. Another way to make baby animal of the day extra fun is having a cute baby animal video on Friday’s. My class calls this Fun Friday and the teacher helper gets to pick the cute baby animal video. We also look at the cute baby animal slide for the day too! There's lots of cute little tiny hamster videos if you're interested in those, and the kids get really excited thinking about making a hamster maze. In fact, my classroom has a pet hamster and one of my fifth graders was so inspired by the first tiny hamster video we watched, she created a maze for our hamster! I love including classroom pets into daily routines as well, so check out this blog post all on classroom pets!
Your class will love learning facts each day!
My students love getting to choose a cute baby animal of the day and talking about animal facts
If you like having different classroom jobs, then I highly recommend having the teacher helper choose the baby animal. Even if you’re using the 180 days of baby animal slides, you can have the teacher helper read the facts. The two facts listed on the slides almost always prompts an animal discussion where at least one student will have more facts about that animal. Sometimes, the animal is one that my students have never heard of so that prompts an even more interesting conversation. I love using the slides during informational writing as well so you can incorporate part of your morning meeting with writing time. It’s been my experience as an elementary school teacher that kids love learning about animals and writing about them as well.
Baby animals are fun and engaging during morning meeting
Morning meeting can be fun and engaging at the same time when you incorporate baby animals
Morning meeting can be fun and engaging at the same time. If you incorporate baby animals, I promise you, you’ll love how much better you feel. Baby animal slides for morning meeting give you stress relief as a teacher, and just makes you feel good to start your day out. Your students are going to love it too. I hope that you will try it and come back to this blog post and let me know how you'd like it.
Your students will be so excited every morning!
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