We are knee-deep in football season and the Super Bowl will be here before we know it! If you are looking for fun football activities to celebrate the big game this football season, check out our football-themed activities below! During this time of year, it can be difficult to keep our students engaged, so adding this fun football unit to your lesson plans is an easy way to engage your students during this time of the school year.

All of these activities are included in our football unit. Our football unit was made for first and second grade students. There are math, phonics, reading, writing, and STEM activities included!
Football Math Activities
Football Graphing

Before the big game, you can gather data from your class to create a graph. Ask your students who will win the Super Bowl. Then, they will graph it on a large anchor chart paper. Afterward, they can graph the class data and answer the questions. Different questions include: Which team had the most votes? Which team had the least amount of votes? How many more votes did the winning team have than the other team? How many votes did the winning team have?
This activity also meets the 1st grade math standard: 1.MD.4: Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and how many more or less are in one category than another.
Football Counting

Another fun activity ahead of the big game is creating a miniature football field to practice skip counting by tens. Students line up each side of the football field counting up by ten to the fifty-yard line and then counting backwards by ten. You can have students do this individually or in math centers.
Football Writing Activities
Add these writing activities to your lesson plans! These writing pieces are great bulletin board ideas as well.
Souper Bowl Writing



What is better than the Super Bowl? How about the Souper Bowl? Students can write about their perfect soup recipe and draw a picture. Students don’t like soup? No problem, they can make up a soup!
Winner’s Shower Writing Activity

This is probably my favorite football activity for celebrating the big game! One of the biggest parts of the Super Bowl is the Winner’s Shower! People even place bets on what color the Gatorade will be! Students can write a story about what color the Gatorade should be and why. Then, they create a cooler with the color they chose “pouring” out of it. You will need to take their picture looking shocked like they are getting a Gatorade shower. This writing activity is a fun bulletin board idea too!
Informative Writing

Don’t know much about football? That’s okay; we have a full non-fiction reading passage to teach you and your class about football! You can use these for a close reading activity with your whole class or in smaller groups. Your students will learn about when the NFL was formed, how teams score points, how many players are on a football team, fun facts, and more! After reading about football, students can create a bubble map of what they learned, use the graphic organizer to organize their writing with a topic sentence, three different sentences, and a concluding sentence. There is also a book template for students to write an informative story about football.
Phonics Reading Center

You can use this activity as a reading center or each student can have this word sort. Students sort the OU words into two categories, if the word sounds like OU in “soup” or OU in “out”. For extra fun, you could put the paper footballs in a “soup” sensory bin with noodles, beans, etc. Students could scoop the words out with a ladle.
Football STEM Activity

Your football players are ready, but oh no! The goal post broke! Your students must create a new sturdy football goal. Give students different choices of material (or just provide one type of material) for your students to create the goal post with. Different types of material could be Lego bricks, Magnatiles, toilet paper rolls, playdough, etc.
Students will work with another student or group of students, create a plan, and draw a blueprint before they start building. This is a great activity to build and strengthen fine motor skills as well when working with different materials. Then, students can create small paper footballs and make a field goal in their new goal post! You could turn this activity into a fun relay race and whoever can get their paper football in the goal post first wins.
Create Your Own Football Team Activity

Students get to create their own football team! They will complete a planning sheet and answer the following questions:
- What is the name of your team?
- What are the colors of your team?
- Who is your star player?
- Where is the team from?
- What is your team’s mascot?
- What makes your team special?
They will also create a logo for their team and their teams’ jersey. This could be done for independent work or with partners and works for students of all skill levels.
Football Bingo Boards

Want to add a fun game to learn the different football vocabulary? The football bingo boards include different football vocabulary and pictures. Call out the word, students mark it, and first one to get 5 in a row gets a bingo! This is a fun way to take a break during the day. You can also use this with the whole group or with small groups, depending on the needs of your classroom.
No Prep Pages To Add To Any Time In Your Day


Our football-themed resource also include many no prep printables that practice math skills, phonics skills, and reading skills. There are opinion writing pages, pages that focus on shapes, telling time, graphing, color by code, a word search, and pages to design a jersey and helmet. These additional pages are great for early finishers, work to leave for a substitute, or to add to lesson plans.
Football-themed Books
I love to add themed books to an exciting time in the school year, and the Super Bowl is no exception! Picture books are a great way to add themed learning into your day! Check out these football-themed books to add to your lesson plans! Affiliate links are included (this means I receive a small commission when you click on the links. Read our full disclosure here).
1. Dino Football by Lisa Wheeler

Dino Football is part of the Dino Sports series. In this book, dinosaurs compete in the Mega Bowl! The Greenblade Snackers play the Rippers. This book has fun rhymes, is color coded to show which team the book is referring to, and introduces football vocabulary like the coin toss, kicker, linemen, etc. It also teaches how many points a touchdown is and more.
2. What Is The Super Bowl? by Dina Anastasio

This is the perfect book to teach your students about the Super Bowl. It is packed with facts about the big game. Your students will learn what the Super Bowl is, how people celebrate, about the very first Super Bowl game, and so much more!
Click here for What Is The Super Bowl?
3. This “Who Is” series also includes books for famous football players like:
- Who Is Travis Kelce?
- Who is Tom Brady?
4. T Is For Touchdown by Brad Herzog

This picture book covers each part of the game from A-Z. Your students will love the rhyme and learning the different vocabulary in alphabetical order.
Click here for T Is For Touchdown. This is also available on Kindle Unlimited if you have a subscription!
5. Goodnight Football by Michael Dahl

Goodnight Football has fun rhymes and illustrations that your students will enjoy. It is about a boy attending a football game and all the things he sees, like the bleachers being full, the cheerleaders shouting, and the quarterback sacked!
Click here for Goodnight Football. This is also on Kindle Unlimited, if you have a subscription!
6. My First Book of Football by Sports Illustrated Kids

This book, My First Book of Football, teaches your students a lot of football facts! Want to know how many football players are on the field at one time? Or about different football vocabulary like end zone, kickoff, defensive players, offensive players, and more. The book has great visuals, and nonfiction text features like diagrams, photographs, captions, etc., and teaches your students about the football game by going through an actual football game in the story.
Click here for My First Book of Football.
Want to add this football unit to your lesson plans?

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