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A substitute teacher smiles after handing out educational activities to students

Educational Games All Substitute Teachers Should Keep On-Hand

Whether the teacher forgot to leave you a lesson plan or you simply want your students to have a little fun for the one or two days that you’re with them, having some exciting educational games on hand is always a good idea. The students will have a blast and grow attached to you in a short period of time, and they’ll actually learn something too!

Story Starters

There are a couple different ways you can go about this game. You can either write one of these story starters on the whiteboard and have each student come up and write another sentence after it. Or, you can print out a few copies of these story starters and hand one out to each child. Then, the students switch stories every five minutes and continue adding on to each story they are given.

Find the printable version of this activity here.

Colorful Shapes

If you know the students are learning about different kinds of shapes, this is a fun way to reinforce some of those ideas. Print out one copy of the shapes below for each student and give them several different crayons to use. Then, instruct them to find the pairs of identical shapes and color them in the same color.

Find the printable version of this activity here.

Fingerprint Fun

Print a copy of the giant fingerprint for each student and instruct them to write about themselves, their dreams, their favorite things, etc on the lines. If they run out of things to say, they can ask their classmates/friends for help with coming up with ideas. When they’re finished, they’ll have a unique piece of art to give to their parents which also helped them work on their writing skills.

Find the printable version of this activity here.

Last Updated: June 09, 2015