Zoom Games for Kids and Students

Zoom games for kids and students are so fun! Like many of you, we have transitioned to online school for the past few weeks and will continue for the rest of the year. The teachers in our district have been using Zoom activities as a great way to connect with kids and students, and many of them have been hosting games and activities online.

Here’s a list of some fun games and activities that you can play with your students or other group of kids via Zoom.

You can pin this image to save it for later so you can refer back to the ideas. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Zoom Equipment

While not necessary, Zoom works great if you have a light on your desk to help with brightness in your Zoom. We use this inexpensive Desk Ring Light and it works great.

If you’re using Zoom on a phone, you’ll need to download the app. You can also use Zoom from a computer (which is what I prefer, so you can see everyone’s screen at once).

Zoom Backgrounds

Did you know that you can change your background on zoom?? It’s so fun! Some of my kiddos are obsessed with changing backgrounds, so we’ve compiled a set of Zoom Backgrounds for FREE using National Park Zoom backgrounds, HERE.

Zoom Activities and Games for Students and Kids

Games and activities on Zoom with kids or students work best when they get everyone involved. When every kid or student has a turn or a way to participate, they stay engaged and connect better with the teacher and other kids. When just the teacher is talking, the kids often zone out, but if you plan games and activities that give each student or kid a turn, they’re bound to want to participate.

Free Zoom accounts have a time limit of 40 minutes. It usually takes several minutes to get everyone on and make sure the audio and video are working, so I would plan on a game of 20-30 minutes or less. If you have a pro Zoom account, of course, you can go longer.

Let’s look at some of the fun games and activities for students and kids that you can play today! And if you have ideas to add to the list, I’d love to hear them!

Zoom Trivia Who’s Who Game

This game is a great way for the kids and students to get to know each other. Ask the kids or their parents questions about themselves ahead of time. Then use those Who’s Who questions and present them to the kids, asking them to guess who the information is about. For example, “this person has a favorite food of asparagus”, etc.

Zoom Talent Show

We actually did this for our first Zoom Activity with our church youth group, and it was a great success! It’s a great introduction for kids to see how zoom works and give them each a chance to participate. Let them know ahead of time to come prepared to share a talent, such as a painting, song, or skit.

As a teacher, you can lead the meeting or assign it to one of the students. Welcome everyone and explain that you will be doing a talent show. Whoever is leading shows their talent and then calls on the next student or kid to go. That student shows their talent and then calls on someone else, on down the line until everyone has a turn. Be sure to clap and be excited after each talent; it is so fun to see them showing off what they’re good at or see them being silly (some talents were funny), and to see them all enjoying time together.

Some examples of talents are:

–several showed pictures they had drawn or painted, just by holding them up to their screen on zoom

–some played musical instruments

–some talked about a story they had written

–some did the splits, some did impromptu pushups

–one even flipped their screen around and showed us a walk-through of a minecraft castle they had built.

If a kid or student doesn’t have a talent, you can encourage them and say, “but you’re good at singing, sing us a song!” or “show us how you can stand on one foot”. But it’s not necessary that all the students participate, some will be called on and say they wanted to pass, and that is totally okay! They can just call on the next person.

Zoom Scavenger Hunt

This is a fun game! Prepare a list of items that you can find in most homes (“sock”, “spoon”, etc). When everyone is ready, read out one of the items and the students race to find it and show it on their screen. Since some kids will be using phones and others computers, it’s good to have a rule that the device has to be stationary, i.e. they can’t take their phone with them to find the item as it will give them an unfair advantage.

You can keep individual points, first one with the item gets the point, or play in teams.

When you are on a computer in “gallery view” you can see all of the screens in the zoom. Get another person to help watch the Zoom in that view to judge to see who has the item first. The kids are super fast at finding and showing things, so judging can get really tricky!

Some examples of items to put on the list: band-aid, tape, fork, hat, cup, blade of grass, mouse, pillow, hairbrush, paperclip, sharpie, etc.

Zoom Scholastic Trivia

The classic game of trivia! Pick your favorite subject, grab some questions, and have fun! You can read the questions, or enlist one of the students to help you. You can either play that the first person to raise their hand gets to answer, or you can take turns to where everyone gets a chance.

There are TONS of trivia questions and themes out there for almost every subject, including some great trivia generators with answers.

Zoom Pictionary Game

Yea for pictionary! You can divide into 2 teams, then you’ll have someone from one team draw and hold their drawing up to the zoom screen while those on their team guess.

You can run the game and have a list of items to draw and then use the private message feature in chat to send that that item to the next drawer so that the rest of the participants don’t see.

Zoom Hi-Lo Math Game

This game is like the Hi-Lo Game on Price is Right. It requires a little prep from the teacher beforehand, but it’ll be worth it! The idea is that you will use the “share your screen” feature on Zoom. And on your screen, then will show a simple math equation with an answer (may be correct or incorrect). For example, “2 x 8=12”. Then the kids can use the “OK”, “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” emojis to indicate if they believe the answer is too high, too low, or correct. You could also just ask the kids to hold up either a thumps up or a thumps down, or “OK” sign on their screen.

This came can be played in teams (they’ll need to be evenly divided), and whoever gets the question right gets points for their team – so if 5 boys and 2 girls get it right, that’s 5 points to the boys team and 2 points to the girls team, etc.

Zoom Coloring Contest

To prepare for this game, you can email out some coloring sheets for the students to print off ahead of time. Each student needs to have their own set of crayons or markers. Hold up one of the coloring sheets and give the students a time limit (such as 5 minutes) and then say “Go!”. They will then color for the duration of the time and then you can sound a bell or say “time’s up!” and have everyone show their masterpieces. It’s up to you if you’d like to award a winner or just compliment each student’s work.

Zoom Bingo Game

Bingo is WAY fun! I have this Bingo Game – if someone has that, you can mail out bingo cards ahead of time. Or you can find online printable bingo cards and email them to all the students. You can then be the caller, or assign a student to be the caller.

Using Kahoot.It with Zoom

You can play educational games using Kahoot! Kids and students love this and may already be familiar with it. Set up a Kahoot (which is a fun, interactive online trivia), then pull it up on your computer screen. Then use the screen-sharing option in Zoom to show your screen to the students or kids. Everyone on Zoom watches their screen. Your screen share will show the question and 4 possible answers, or True/False questions and answers.

Each student needs a device of their own (phone, tablet, laptop, etc). They all join your Kahoot using a code you provide them. Then everyone is logged into the Kahoot and they use their own phones to enter their answers. It’s way fun!

Zoom Spinner Quiz Game

I grabbed this spinner wheel and it is loads of fun!! It comes with a dry erase marker and is customizable. In advance, prepare a list of categories for your quiz. For example, you could have a “Space” themed quiz and have categories such as “Earth”, “Solar System”, “Moon”, “Sun” etc. Then write the name of the categories on each section of the wheel; you can use the categories more than once if needed.

Next, make a list of questions for each category. For example, under the “Earth” category, you could have questions such as “What percentage of the earth’s surface is water?” or “What is the tallest mountain on earth?”

Each student gets a chance to “spin” the wheel (you’ll need to spin it for them). Depending on what category the spinner lands on, your can then read a question to that student.

Feel free to add variation to this game by making some of the spinner wheel sections bonus questions, lose a turn, etc. to mix it up! This is a great game for foreign language study, geography, science, math, you name it!

Read a Book Via Zoom

This activity might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s still fun! Reading a book together out loud is a great activity, especially for younger kids. You can read picture books and hold up the book, or read them online and share your screen with the students.

For older kids, you can all read the same book together. If all the students don’t have a copy of the book, you can share your screen via Zoom and they can read off the shared screen.

Online Charades via Zoom

Charade Game:
Host sends a word individually to one of the youth , they act out the word and the rest of the group tries to guess what it is
Reverse Charades:
Host sends a word to all but one youth , all youth act out at one time, while the one youth tries to guess , this one gets pretty interesting
See but No Hear:
Host sends a word to individual , youth mutes their microphone and rest of group tries to guess what they are saying without sound

Zoom Game See, But Not Hear!

Another one of our fun Zoom games for kids is See, But Not Hear. Split into two even teams. One person will be sent a word or phrase privately through Zoom chat. They will mute themselves (really important) and say that word or phrase into their camera and everyone on their team will attempt to guess what they are saying. If they guess it correctly, they will be given 10 points. If after 1 minute the team hasn’t guessed it correctly, the other team will get one guess (after collectively deciding on their guess) to steal the points. If they guess it correctly, they will receive the 10 points.

The goal is to let every person try one word or phrase. After each person has had a chance, the score will be tallied and a winning team declared! 😉

More Zoom Games for Kids Ideas

What other Zoom Games and Activity Ideas do you have for kids and students?? Please let me know and I’ll update the post!

For similar ideas of fun games and activities for church youth groups, check out my article here.