Give your students an opportunity to share something about themselves with an art activity. Give students a variety of magazines and a pair of safety scissors. Ask students to cut out pictures of things they like or activities they enjoy. Provide students with a piece of white card stock and a glue stick, and encourage them to glue the pictures onto the paper to make a collage. Let students decorate their collages with paint, markers, glitter and stickers. Hang up the collages or let students present them to their classmates.
Set students up for success by helping them to create a portfolio to hold all of their best work during the upcoming year. Give each student a pocket folder made from paper. In addition, provide art supplies including stickers, glitter and markers. Invite each student to write their name and the words "My Best Work" on the front of the folder. Let students decorate the folder as they wish. Keep the folders and add the students' best work to it throughout the year. Give the students their folders at the end of the school year.
Use a craft project to help students set goals for the first grade. Give each student a piece of card stock with the words "My First Grade Wish" written on the top. Ask each student to draw his or her wish for the school year on the paper using markers and crayons. Help students write out their wish on the bottom of the page. Laminate each page, and bind all of the pages together to make a class book.
Decorate your classroom and help students get to know each other with paper plate portraits. Give each student a large paper plate. Provide paint in different flesh colored tones, and ask students to paint their plate the appropriate color. Let the paint dry, then encourage students to use markers to draw in their facial features. To complete the project, provide yarn and glue, and let students glue the yarn onto their heads to make hair. Hang the portraits up on a bulletin board in the classroom.