Starting the school year or walking into a new room every day as a substitute can become pretty draining and confronting for both teachers and students.

Luckily, there are things you can do to break the ice and make the kids feel a lot more enthused and comfortable about learning. Simply spend 10 to 15 minutes trying a couple of these activities listed below to help break that awkward tension.

Now have students try to guess who the artists was for each picture

Pass around a sheet of paper and some pens. Ask the students to write their name and their favorite TV shows (you can come up with your own topic for favorite things). Collect the papers and pens. Begin reading the answers, but have the class guess who wrote the response.

Call out any month of the year and have all students born in that month come up to the front of the room. It is up to the students to decide who stands first, second, etc., so they are standing from the first day of the month to the last day find more info of the month. Now call out another month (don’t call the months in order), and have those students try to position themselves correctly by day and by where they should stand as an entire month. This is a great way to get kids working together and knowing each other. Once all of the kids have lined up, test them to see if they are correct.

Have students write three things about themselves on a piece of paper. Then have them crumble up the paper to resemble a snowball. Let the students have a snowball fight for about one minute. Now everyone grabs one of the snowballs and has to try and find the person who wrote on it.

Line up the students in two lines facing each other. If there is an odd number of students, you can play the game, too. Give students 30 seconds to look each other over really good, paying attention to all details about their partner. The students in one line now turn facing the other way while the other line of students changes something about themselves. For example, a girl might take off a hair bow, or a boy might un-tuck his shirt. When the kids in the first line turn back around, they have to guess what their partner changed. Now switch and let the first line make the change and the second line guess the difference.

Once they find their partner, they have to bring that person up in front of the class and explain what they learned about their new friend with the three facts written on the piece of paper

Have the students draw pictures about what they like to do, what their favorite foods are, and what is their favorite subject in school. Have each student come up and show their pictures to the class. See if the students can guess what each student drew that tells a little bit about themselves. For instance, if a student draws a yellow M, can anyone guess that she likes McDonalds?

Don’t forget about this old time favorite part of class. Instruct students to bring in something that they cherish, or just want to share with the class. Give each student a turn to come up and tell about the item that they brought in. This way the class will get to know each other and something that makes each student happy.

Have your students draw themselves. After they have done this, collect the papers and hang them up for the whole class to see.