When introducing students to each other or taking the time to build much-needed teamwork skills, playing Do You Trust Me? will help students quickly build bonds with each other. Divide the class into partnerships. Blindfold one student and instruct the other partner to stand just behind the blindfolded student's ear. Send the pair on an obstacle course through the classroom. The blindfolded student must follow the verbal directions of his partner to make it to the other end. No touching is allowed. When the partners have made it through the course together, they switch roles.
Help your students experience the food chain firsthand by playing Food Chain Tag. Give everyone in the class a plastic grocery bag. This is where the students will store their food or energy. Cut 25 sheets of green construction paper into quarters to create the "food." Line the class up outside in an area with boundaries about the size of a kickball field. As the classes watches, quickly sprinkle the green cards all throughout the area of play. Assign 3/4 of the class to be rabbits. Call "Go," and send the rabbits out into the field to pick up one card at a time and place it in their bag. Allow them about two minutes to eat before sending out all but one of the rest of the class as hawks. The hawks must try to touch a rabbit on the back. If a rabbit is touched, it must pass its bag of food, or energy, to the hawk and go stand back at the sideline. After the hawks have been eating for about two minutes send out the last class member, who is a wolf. The wolf can tap anybody on the back, take his bag and send him to the sideline. After play has gone on for a while reconvene and talk about what was frustrating and how each animal's adaptation might help it survive the food chain.
Invite your fourth-grade students to review recently studied concepts, such as geography, while playing a fun, energetic game. Have your students stand together to form a circle. Hit a large, blown-up latex balloon into the air and call out a country of a particular continent or hemisphere being studied or a state in the United States. Before the next student can hit the balloon back into the air she must call out the correct name of another country or state name. The object of the game is to keep the balloon from touching the floor by taking turns calling out the correct country or state's names.
Test your students' concentration and memory skills with this fun game that can be played outdoors or indoors. Divide your class into groups of four. Give one student in each group a clipboard with several sheets of paper attached. Instruct the students to draw a group of 16 circles in a four-by-four arrangement, placing each circle about 1 foot apart. If playing indoors, students can cut circles from paper. The student with the clipboard must draw the arrangement of circles on her clipboard and map out a secret pathway from one side of the grid to the other. Invite one student to start by choosing a circle to stand on. The student with the clipboard will say "yes" if that is the circle her secret pathway begins on. She will say "no" if that is not the correct circle, in which case a new student will choose a circle to start on. The three guessing students will take turns testing which way is the correct pathway, and the challenge will be to keep track of where the pathway is to make it to the other side of the grid. As play continues, add more circles and more complicated pathways.