A short list of handy-dandy brain breaks we've been doing and have liked

Brain breaks are an incredibly useful tool in the classroom, especially (god sixth period, or first period) when your kids are full or fidgety - and you can do them target language. Here's a short list of ones I've done so far this year that have worked for me. Let me know if there are any you do, too, that work, and I'll put 'em on the list!



1. Tell them: put a pencil on the ground. Pick it up with your feet and hand it to your elbows. Time yourself. (you can then use that for all kinds of TL things, if you want)

2. Tell them: mumber your left shoulder 1, left ear 2, nose 3, right ear 4, right shoulder 5. Find a partner and face them. Touch any two of those in combination. Your partner has to do the math target language (e.g. you touch your left shoulder and nose, and your partner says unum et tria sunt quattuor)

3. This one takes a little longer but is fun: hand out play-do to partners. They have twenty seconds to make something, and their partner has twenty seconds to identify it in the target language.

4. Several games of saxum-charta-forfices. :) You can play these in individual partners, in lightning rounds, in a circle, or in teams.

5. Rehearsing body parts by touching random ones. Bonus points if they're odd to touch together, like touch your nose to your poplites (the backs of your knees). Tell them: touch your elbows to your nose. Touch your ears with your ankles. Touch your eyebrows with your hips/knees/whatever. Rinse and repeat.

6. The game of Vah. I learned this from Tammy Kantzes. Everyone stands in a circle. The player raises his hands above his head, brings them down to point at one person, and says, "Vah!" (this is nice, because it is quite nice exclamation in latin). Then two things happen simultaneously:
1. The vah-receiver throws their hands in the air straight up and says Vah
2. The person directly to the left and the person directly to the right of the vah-receiver bring both their arms to point at the person who just received the Vah.

If any of those three people does not do that, the one who didn't is out. The vah-receiver now brings their hands down to point at a new person and says Vah! It continues from there at a fast pace until there are only two people left, who both win.

7. Three snaps. http://latinforeveryone.blogspot.com/2015/09/more-games-your-students-play.html

8. Concentration 64: http://latinforeveryone.blogspot.com/2015/01/games-your-students-play-concentration.html

9. This one, if you do it TL, is great for directions: Have the kids stand up. They should move their right hands in front of them from left to right, fingers pointing up, palm facing away. Then stop. Move the right hand up and down. Then do it at the same time, trying not to move either hand diagonally. Then switch hands. Then cross your arms and do it.

10. Have them find a particular object - a pencil, something blue, a thing bigger than they are.