First Day Feelings Activities To Kick off the School Year

We all know how big the first day of school can feel for both students and teachers. There’s excitement, nerves, uncertainty, and maybe some first day jitters! That’s why it’s so important to weave emotional support into your lessons right out of the gate! In this post, I’m sharing simple ways you can address first day feelings and start building a classroom community from day one!

Kick off the school year with a community building approach using these first day feelings activities.

Why First Day Feelings Matter

Taking time to acknowledge first day feelings isn’t just one of those “nice-to-haves”. It’s foundational for building trust and connection with your students. When we give students space to share their emotions, we’re creating a supportive and caring environment. Not only will this help your kids feel at home in your classroom, but it’s going to help so much with classroom management over time! After all, kids who feel secure often behave better! What a wonderful way to kick off your year, right?!

For many primary students, this may be their first time navigating big emotions in a group setting. Naming those feelings and discussing them together helps normalize them. It also fosters connection and creates a shared sense of understanding. When kids feel emotionally safe, they’re more likely to take risks, build friendships, and fully engage in learning. So, before diving into the routines and expectations at the beginning of the year, let’s start with first day feelings! Here’s how this looks in my classroom.

Bring Feelings Front and Center with Books

First Day Jitters is the perfect read aloud to kick off the school year.

In my classroom, I love to start off the first day of school with an activity that focuses on first day feelings. It’s a great icebreaker, and will help you connect right off the bat. But before we dive into the lesson, I always start with a great picture book to get the conversation going.

In my room, I love to use First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg. This book is great because it’s a bit comical and will make your kids smile. This is key to helping kiddos open up and feel safe in doing so! The ending of this book is always a hit and serves as a gentle reminder that even grown-ups feel unsure sometimes. If you have another favorite, use it! Really, any story that touches on the range of emotions kids might be feeling on the first day of school is perfect.

So, choose a book or digital read-aloud and plan to begin your lesson with it. You can pause afterward and begin talking about some of the feelings mentioned in the book. This will lead you right into your lesson!

Explore First Day Feelings as a Class

Encourage students to share their first day feelings with this fun graphing activity.

Next, I like to use this First Day Feelings Resource to dive a little deeper. Inside, you will find a whole group graphing activity that is designed to allow each student in your classroom an opportunity to share how they are feeling. The categories included for the graph are happy, sad, excited, and nervous. Each child will get a blank face, and they get to draw a picture of how they are feeling and write the word.

You’ll attach the heading and category headers to an anchor chart, and each student gets to place their face under the coordinating spot. I always kick this off by sharing how I am feeling and why, and then add it under the category it goes with.

You can allow students to share how they are feeling and why, if they’d like to. Even if only a few kiddos want to share this information, it will help your students process their emotions and why they might be feeling them.

Pro Tip: I like to keep this anchor chart and display it somewhere in our room for the first few weeks. Then, I will pack it away and bring it out again to reflect on at the end of the year. More on that below, so keep reading!

Write About Feelings

There are different versions of these writing prompts, so you can choose the best option for your students.

After we make our whole group graph, I send the kiddos off to work on an independent activity and dive a little deeper into this topic. There are 6 different student activity pages included in this resource. This makes it easy to choose the option that works best, or differentiate by skill level. There are options for drawing, writing, and coloring.

The idea is to have students sit down with their page and expand just a little on what they feel and why. I love seeing what the kids come up with, as it really helps them learn a little more about them. These pages make an adorable keepsake for parents as well! I always save these to send home after we’re finished.

This activity is so great for the first day of school because it’s low-prep, easily differentiated, and allows us to explore this important topic in a way that feels fun! I find it to be a great ice breaker and helps my kiddos feel safe, understood, and valued in our classroom. All of which is so important when it comes to building classroom community at the beginning of the year!

Plan to Bring Feelings Full Circle

Do you love this idea and want to plan ahead for the last day of school, too? Wait, what?! We’re talking about the first day of school, aren’t we? Yes, of course! But, over the years, I have learned that students process some pretty big emotions at the end of the school year, too! Because of this, I created an activity for the last day of school that helps them work through these feelings and mirrors the activity we use on the first day.

After beginning the year with first day feelings, you can end the year with last day feelings!

This is where the anchor chart you made will come in really handy! You’ll pull that chart out and compare first day feelings with last day feelings. This will prompt a great discussion with your students! And if you’re really great at planning, you can even save those first day feelings journaling pages. Plan to send them home together with the last day feelings journal pages so that parents and kids can reflect on the change.

If this sounds like an incredible win for social emotional support in your classroom, you’ll be happy to know that you can find both of these resources in a money-saving bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers. Yep, that’s right! Click on the image below to snag both the First Day Feelings Resource and the Last Day Feelings Resource together. You’ll save money and have a fantastic, low-prep lesson ready to go for the two biggest days in the school year!

First Day Feelings Count!

Creating a classroom where kids feel safe to show up exactly as they are begins on day one! By giving space for feelings and making connection a priority, you’re not just teaching, you’re building a community! And when your students feel safe, they’re more willing to try, learn, and grow. So, if you’re looking for ways to make this your best year yet, I highly recommend starting with first day feelings! Don’t forget you can check out the activities mentioned here in my Feelings Bundle on TPT! Have a great year, friend!