Are you looking for ways to spice up your daily lessons? With the school year drawing to a close a fantasy theme full of magical adventures could be just what your class needs.
These fantasy-themed activities for primary students are designed to spark creativity, encourage imaginative play, and make learning feel magical. I’ve gathered 11 classroom activities and 3 book recommendations that incorporate literacy, STEM, sensory play, dramatic play, and writing to bring a little enchantment into your classroom.
Enjoy!
11 Fantasy-Themed Activities for Primary Students
Magical Math
- Dragon Egg Sorting: Put “gems” inside coloured “dragon” eggs (use the plastic eggs from the dollar store) and then have the students sort both the eggs and gems by colour. For an extra challenge the kids could create bar graphs to show how many of each colour.
- Castle Creations: My classes used to LOVE building castles with foam blocks. Below you can see a pic of the ones I used to have in my class. You could also provide your students with construction paper or shiny wrapping paper and toilet paper rolls to create their own colourful towers. Throw in some Lego figures so there are some people who can live in the castle.
Source: Walmart
Fantasy Crafts and Sensory Activities
- Fairy Playdough: This is easy to make with hair conditioner and cornstarch. It has a wonderfully smooth texture and can be more fairy-like by adding plastic gems or glitter. It’s easy to google a recipe, but here’s a tried and true one by Laughing Kids Learn. You can see a pic of it below.
- Design a Magical Creature: I used to do a version of this most every year with my students. After reading a book about monsters, fairies, or dragons, I’d given them all sorts of fun supplies like sequins, glitter, feathers, googly eyes, sticker, tissue paper, multi-coloured construction paper, crayons, felts, paints and let them go to town creating their own fantasy creature. They always LOVED doing this and were so proud of their creations.
- Magic Potions: Do you remember doing this as a kid? I sure do! I’d make potions with mud, sticks, grass and daisies. And I’d set my own children up in front of the sink with food colouring, water, baking soda, dish soap and various containers. It can be a bit messy, but most children are fascinated to see what happens when they mix up various concoctions.
- Magic Wands: One year my first graders and I made magic wands together using craft sticks and foam stars. We did this as part of a New Year’s celebration but this is perfect for a fantasy-themed activity. You could also use sticks, feathers, ribbons, and glued-on sequins.
Source: Laughing Kids Learn
Writing and Fine Motor
- Potion Recipes: After your kids have made their potions, ask them to write out the potion recipe in their own words. Be sure they use a pencil. then carefully rip of some of the edges, crumple up the paper then smooth out again, and then lightly paint on some strong tea. You could use a soft brush or one of the tea bags. Once the paper has dried it’s probably best to flatten it overnight under a heavy book.
- Dragon Scales Tweezing: This is perfect for kindergarten students to help strengthen the small muscles in their fingers. Make a playdoh nest and fill it with sequins, colourful glass gems, and/or beads. Give them a tweezer and a paper outline of a dragon, and have them pick up the “scales” to place on the dragon’s body.
Literacy and Storytelling
- Reader’s Theater: Use simple scripts for classics like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Kids love wearing simple construction paper masks and acting out parts as they read. Or they could even use paper bag puppets! (See below for some ideas).
- Story Retelling Sacks: Fill small bags with props related to a story you’ve read to your class. For example, for The Three Little Pigs you could include a plastic pig, a wolf cutout, and straw and let students sequence and retell the story of The Three Little Pigs on their own.
- Fantasy Paper Bag Puppets: You could design your own bag puppets OR you could use any and all of the puppets from my fantasy collection. They’re absolutely perfect for encouraging creative thinking and practising oral skills. Not to mention, they can easily be used to retell many fantasy-themed stories.
Click the picture to see the bundle in my store. You can also buy them separately!
The bundle includes 12 adorable characters. Click the pic!
Book Ideas to Support the Fantasy Theme
Uni the Unicorn (Amazon link) by Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a sweet series. I believe there are 11 books in the series now
The Princess and the Pony (Amazon link) by Kate Beaton is a very funny book. You can read my review here.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Amazon link) by Grace Lin is a classic. It’s won all sorts of awards and is on two lists of best fantasy books for children. It’s aimed at 8-12 year olds and is a quest story with a dragon and many other magical creatures.
I hope you enjoyed these ideas and can put some of them to use!
