Who’s got the spirit? WE ALL DO!
Classroom
Spirit week ideas
Who’s got the spirit? WE ALL DO!
School spirit week is one of the most anticipated events on the calendar. Students, teachers, and administrators spend the week coming up with creative outfit ideas to fit the week’s themes.
But planning the perfect spirit week itinerary can be a tall task. After all, you don’t want to keep rehashing the same few themes year after year.
If you’re looking for spirit week inspiration, look no further… From traditional themes to modern-day screams, we have themes that will get everyone pumped to dress up this spirit week!
Education resources
What is spirit week?
If you’ve stumbled across this blog and clicked out of curiosity or need a refresher, you might not know what spirit week is or why it exists.
School spirit week is usually held during the school year and is dedicated to celebrating school pride! This week, students and faculty dress up in school colors and participate in fun activities, like dress-up days, competitions, and pep rallies, to show their school spirit!
It’s also a great way for the school to show that it cares about its students and wants to create a positive learning environment. Spirit week is a great way to bring the school spirit alive and make everyone feel part of one unified community!
It’s a great way to unite as a school community and have fun!
The benefits of having spirit week at your school
Celebrating spirit week in school is an important part of building a strong community and fostering a sense of pride and belonging. It’s a great way to unite students, teachers, and staff around a common goal and create a sense of connectedness. Participating in spirit week can provide various educational, emotional, social, and mental health benefits.
Educational benefits
Spirit Week encourages students to explore their creativity and learn problem-solving skills. It also allows students to practice team-building, collaboration, and communication. Additionally, it can help build school spirit and curate a positive school culture, leading to increased academic performance.
Emotional benefits
Participating in spirit week can help to boost student morale and create a sense of camaraderie among students and staff. It can also help to reduce stress, increase self-confidence, and build relationships.
Social benefits
Spirit Week is a great way to unite students from different backgrounds or beliefs. It can help to promote inclusivity and encourage students to appreciate each other’s differences.
Mental health benefits
Participating in spirit week can help to reduce anxiety and depression and promote positive mental health. It can also help create a sense of purpose and be an outlet for students to express themselves.
With so many benefits on offer, all that’s left is to plan an incredible spirit week!
31 spirit week theme ideas
Here’s our spirit week theme days list with some enticing accompanying activity ideas.
1. Sports day
Students and faculty should come dressed in the sports attire of their favorite sport. If they don’t have one, encourage everyone to wear the wackiest sports gear and athleisure.
During the day, you can hold a school-wide sports day, splitting the entire school into four or five teams, each with its name and chant. Divide each event into year groups so everyone can compete at least once. For example, one event could be a 100m sprint. You can split this into each year group and have representatives from each team compete in that event for their year group.
The winning team can get a small reward like a medal or certificate.
2. Inside-out day
On inside out day, everyone comes to school wearing their clothes… you guessed it… inside out!
As an inside-out activity, your students can try creating “inside-out” art projects, including sculptures and drawings. Please choose a subject matter and get creative with it!
3. Superhero day
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s a school full of superheroes! Everyone should come dressed as their favorite hero on superhero day – fictional or real life!
On superhero day, students in each class can create their own 5-minute stories or play about superheroes to perform to the rest of the school at the end of the day.
4. Career day
Students come to school dressed in an outfit that highlights the career they want when they’re older. For teachers and other faculty staff, come as the career you wanted as a child and relive the dream.
Career day would be a great opportunity to have guest speakers talk about their careers and the interesting paths they took to get there. Parents are a great resource for these talks.
5. Twin day
Team up with another person at the school and swap styles for the day.
Twin Day is a great opportunity to improve teamwork skills by having your “twins” work together daily on various tasks.
6. Decade-specific day
1980s, 1920s, 1990s… there are some iconic fashion decades in recent history. Pick one and make it a theme for the year.
On theme, make the day a technology-free day and revert to the good ol’ days when teaching was done with little more than a chalkboard and notebook!
7. Beach day
Pink flamingo beach floaties and palm tree shorts… there is plenty of fun looks to create in this theme.
This theme day is the perfect time to do the best thing at the beach…
…hold a sandcastle-building competition!
Let your students split into groups of four or five and give them an hour to build the most elaborate sandcastle – the bigger the backstory, the better!
And if you don’t have sand available, don’t worry. Get inventive by getting your students to build their sandcastles using cardboard boxes and other household objects. You can ask parents to donate old cans, cardboard boxes, bottles, etc., for students to use on the day.
8. Interesting t-shirt day
You can tell a lot about a person by the t-shirts they choose to wear… so let your students and faculty express themselves with theirs!
On that day, why not have a t-shirt painting session?
Get your students to bring in a plain white t-shirt (or see if local businesses will donate them), and let students create a school spirit t-shirt that speaks to your school’s strengths. You can give the best T-shirt a prize… you could even sell them at the next summer fair or football game!
9. Meme day
Memes rule the world these days. So your students would jump at the chance to dress up as their favorite one.
During the day, you could either have your students teach masterclasses on memes to the faculty or get students to try and create their meme that shows the school’s spirit.
10. Wacky socks day
Everyone wears odd socks by accident at least once in their lives. This theme encourages everyone to do it on purpose!
11. Crazy hat day
What’s that? A hat? Crazy, funky, junky hat!
If crazy hats are good enough for Selena Gomez, they’re good for our students, right?
Hold a fashion show to showcase the creme de la creme of the best hats on the show this day.
You can even hold an art class to create your papier mache hats and decorate them to highlight your school spirit by incorporating school colors and positive words of encouragement!
12. Wild hair day
Wild hair day is a fun way to show off fun looks without worrying about clothing. Students and teachers alike can play with hairspray, accessories, and unlikely objects to create their hair masterpieces.
Here’s a great activity for today…but be warned, it’s not for the faint-hearted!
Gather a few brave faculty members and raffle off the opportunity for a few students to give them a hair makeover during assembly! Or, if not a hairstyle, you could do a head shave for charity – with the proceeds going to a charity voted for by your students.
13. Pajama day
This is what we wish we could rock up to school on most days. Having a pajama day is fun to dress up with clothes they already have at home!
Get students to bring in their pillows, blankets, and sheets (make sure they are clearly labeled with each student’s name so they can take them home at the end of the day). Each class should then build the best classroom fort they can
Appoint three faculty members to attend every class and pick an overall winner!
Not only is this a fun and creative way to celebrate teamwork and school spirit, but it’s also a nice change of environment to do class in for the day.
15. Royalty day
Kings, queens, princesses, and princes… today is the day everyone dresses like royalty! Expect a lot of plastic crowns and shiny ballgowns…
A fun activity for today is to designate a “throne” in each classroom and give each student an allocated time slot to be the king/queen of the class. There are no real perks other than a prime seat, but it’s a nice way to give every student a few moments to feel special!
16. Book day
Book day lets your students channel their imagination and show off their favorite characters.
Make it even more fun by getting students to act as their characters for the whole day!
17. Movie day
Like book day, movie day is a fun way to let your students (and faculty) embody their favorite character from a film. You can even choose a movie genre to narrow it down – e.g., action movies, rom-com, sci-fi, etc.
Movie day is a fun opportunity to get students involved in school spirit by making short movies about why they love their school!
18. Ugly sweater day
Remember that ugly sweater from great aunt Nora? The one you push to the back of the wardrobe, never to see the light again? Everyone has one, so why not allow students and teachers to wear theirs out with an ugly sweater day?
19. Christmas sweater day
Sure, it might not be Christmas, but it seems like a shame to only wear your fun Christmas jumper once a year. So why not give them another day to breathe?!
Just make sure to let parents know well in advance so they don’t pack the Christmas sweaters away and have to spend an entire day searching for them!
20. Photo day
Photos are memories. And school is one of the best places for your students to make them.
Why not set up a photo booth around the school for your students to enjoy at recess and lunch? It would help if you also allocated each class a window during the day for exclusive access so everyone can use the booth.
This is also a good day to take an informal class photo. Dressing up in school colors is a great accompaniment for this theme day.
21. Talent show day
Everyone has talent, even if they aren’t sure what there is.
Celebrate your students’ talent by holding a day-long talent show for the school. If the weather is good, you can hold it outdoors.
Set up stalls with fun food and activities (with proceeds donated to school projects) and turn it into a full-on festival!
You can even invite parents to get involved, too!
22. Gratitude day
As humans, we don’t tell people we care enough. Today, give each student a pad of paper and encourage them to write kind notes to each other and faculty members to express their gratitude.
I would advise that you also do a Secret Santa-style gratitude event in each class, with every student writing an anonymous note of gratitude to their allocated person to ensure no one is excluded.
It would also be great for teachers to write a personalized gratitude note to every student in your homeroom.
23. Serve your community day
What screams school spirit more than community?
On Serve the community day, set up opportunities for students to give back. Whether picking up garbage, volunteering at retirement homes, or conducting a can drive for the local food bank, get students excited to help their community!
24. Diversity day
Your students and faculty have vastly different upbringings and backstories. Diversity Day is a great way to celebrate different heritages and promote inclusivity.
It’s also fun to get everyone to bring in a small dish from a country of heritage to share with their peers. (Make sure there are no allergies first!).
25. Outdoor learning day
School spirit days don’t have to be big and wacky. Having class outdoors is a calm, understated way to get students excited about being at school without much preparation.
Just make sure to have a contingency plan in case it rains, or the weather is awful!
26. Kindness rocks days
Kindness rocks are a creative way to spread positivity among students.
Find some smooth pebbles or rocks around the school (or get students to bring in their own) and dedicate an art lesson to painting kind words on rocks.
Create an area outside where students can place their rocks for the year – a kindness corner of sorts.
You can even have some older students paint a kindness mural on a wall in the playground.
27 . Marvel vs. DC day
You may be wondering why we’ve listed this as a theme when we mentioned superhero day earlier in this list.
As most of your students will tell you, there is a very big rivalry between DC and Marvel, with most people picking one side. You could also use this theme to choose two categories for students to choose a side and dress up. You could then hold a debate for the two for students to participate in.
28. Celebrity look-a-like day
Quite simply, celebrities seem to rule the world, especially these days. Get your students and faculty to dress up as their favorite. (Don’t be surprised to see many Harry Styles walking around today!).
29. Role model day
It’s important to look up to people. Whether it’s a famous person, teacher, or family member, everyone has someone that inspires them. Today’s the day to honor them by dressing up like them.
You can then spend an English class writing letters of gratitude to these role models, discussing why they inspire you and how you hope to use their teachings in the future.
It’s best to keep these letters private as some students may not want to participate fully if they think other people will read their thoughts and feelings.
30. STEM day
STEM is an extremely underrated and underrepresented subject area that deserves more focus. Take this day to create a jam-packed STEM event with experiments, guest speakers, and discovering the fun of science, technology, and engineering.
Popular experiments include Mentos, coke, elephant paste, and chemical color changes. Just do a safety check before you do anything, and leave the dangerous stuff to the experts!
31. School penny day
School penny day is a brilliant way to raise money for the school or a charity of your students’ choosing.
On school penny day, everyone should bring as many pennies as possible (but please emphasize that there is no pressure to bring lots – only bring what you and your parents can).
Students will add to a chain of pennies at school to see how long they can all collectively make it. The chain will be measured. The coins will then be collected and donated.
This is a great one to do every year to see if you can beat the previous year’s record!
Bring the spirit to your school!
The best spirit weeks are carefully planned out and allow every student to participate. They offer fun, interactive ways to instill teamwork, confidence, positivity, and community into your school.
So when planning your next school-wide spirit week, keep this list at hand!
Go school spirit!
