End-of-Year Early Finisher Activities to Keep Students Engaged

As the end of the school year approaches, keeping early finishers engaged can sometimes be a challenge. We all know the classroom energy increases as the days left in the school year decreases.  It is tricky to find fun worksheets for 1st grade that can engage and hold attention during the last few weeks in May and June. 

To keep your eager learners motivated and occupied, I recommend some summer-themed early finisher activities. These printable ELA and math worksheets for grade 1 can provide an enjoyable way to fill spare moments in the classroom.  These fast finishers can also be made into a handy 1st grade summer review packet for parents to keep their children sharp over the summer break.  

Coloring Activities

The first type of activities I can recommend are coloring activities.  These activities can be used for a variety of ELA and math skills and usually have some sort of key for which spaces to fill with which color.. The spaces may reveal a surprise picture or pattern.  Or the colored spaces could just be a shape like the bubbles in Bubbly Summer Sounds, a worksheet where learners identify the sounds in words contained in floating bubbles.

Cut and Paste Early Finisher Activities

Next we have cut and paste activities.  In these activities, students have to cut out part of the paper and paste it in the proper spot.  These activities are great for kids that need to be doing something more active than coloring, but still something that is quiet and can be done at a desk.  Good for practicing a variety of math or ELA skills, cut and paste activities can take on any theme.  For example, the cute crabs in Crabby Compounds, a worksheet for practicing compound words by matching up a cut out crab with its counterpart on the paper.

Writing Activities

After having fun coloring and cutting, your students can move on to a writing activity.  These activities are often a little more traditional in terms of writing answers, but they can still be lots of fun.  For example, in Beachy Possessive Nouns, a worksheet for reviewing creating possessive forms of nouns, students get to read and write about lots of fun beach items that different people have.  This type of activity could definitely be used to practice a variety of other ELA skills like rhyming and math skills like comparison statements.

Sorting Activities

Another fun type of worksheet is one where learners need to sort words or pictures into categories.  It can be based on numbers, parts of speech, sounds, or many other math and ELA skills, and there can be two or more groups that things are sorted into.  An example of a sorting activity is Even or Odd, a worksheet where students have to color pictures with even numbers one color and odd numbers another.

Spinner Early Finisher Activities

A favorite type of review activity for my students is a spinner activity.  Using a paperclip and a pencil, kids create a spinner to spin different elements they need to complete the worksheet.  This gives the worksheet elements of a game, which is incredibly motivating for students.  A worksheet called Addition Adventures is a great way to review addition equations, but an activity like this could also work for reviewing other math or ELA skills, such as plurals or graphing.

Fill-in-the-Blank Activities

One final activity, which is very similar to writing activities, is a fill-in-the-blank activity.  In this type of worksheet, students have to look at pictures to collect information and then use that information to answer a question.  The information could be an ELA skill like prepositions or a math skill like telling time.  In the activity Time for a Beach Day, students must read an analog clock to determine what time different activities happened at the beach.  

If you are looking for more of the type of activities in this post, you should check out my Summer Review & May Early Finisher Activities for 1st Grade product on Teachers Pay Teachers.  With 50 different worksheets covering 14 ELA topics and 12 math topics, this is sure to be a fast finisher or review packet you will turn to over and over in your 1st grade classroom.

With these engaging summer-themed early finisher activities, fast finishers in 1st grade will stay motivated and entertained as the school year winds down. Whether they’re practicing math or honing literacy skills, these print-and-go worksheets offer a valuable way to keep the learning going. Plus, these early finisher activities double as a handy review packet for parents looking to prevent the summer slide. So, let’s make the most of those early finisher moments and soak up some summer learning!

Want more early finisher ideas? Check out this blog post!