11 Free Classroom Rewards (Easy Student Incentives)

Want to reward your students but have a zero budget to do so? Here are fun and unique free classroom rewards students will find irresistible.

Is your classroom budget nonexistent low, but you still want some ways to reward and incentivize your students?

When resources are tight, you’ve got to get creative with your classroom rewards and student incentives (I know YOU know this).

Don’t worry – I’m here to help!

Check out these free classroom rewards.

Free Classroom Rewards

Below you'll find playful, fun, and interesting free classroom rewards students will want to work towards.

1. 20 Minutes of Would You Rather Question Play

Would you Rather questions are absolutely fun and hilarious, and such a good time – you can reward your students with 20 minutes of just asking each other these silly questions.

Hint: Here are Money Would You Rather questions for middle school, and for high school that’ll teach kids more about their own Money Habits and Money Values…in case you want to keep things educational, too. You can also find lots of other free Would You Rather questions out there.

Set a timer, print out some free Would You Rather questions, and let your students cut loose.

2. Eat Lunch in a Different School Location

Can your class all bring their lunches to a fun location in the school one day instead of the noisy cafeteria for their reward?

This could be an outdoor picnic, in the gym on blankets for an indoor picnic (and easy clean-up), in your classroom, in another teacher’s classroom…use your imagination!

Where would your students think eating was “cool” and special?

3. Class-Wide Free Homework Pass

Students could earn free homework Fridays every week, every other week, or just every so often.

4. Lead a Classroom Walk Outside

A great classroom reward is for the whole class to get to go outside and walk along the property.

Does your school have a forested area? Even better.

Is there a creek?

Even if there’s nothing short of a field with fencing, lead them on a walk outside together as the reward. It’s better than being stuck inside again!

5. Lunch with the Principal

Would your principal be willing to eat lunch just with your class for their reward?

That could be fun! Also great for relationship building with the head of the school.

Hint: Another idea for this is to eat with the teacher, in the teacher’s lounge! Could that be arranged? Imagine how special your students would feel.

6. King Arthur Free Bake for Good Demonstration

You can apply for your class/school to receive a free baking demonstration from King Arthur.

My son’s school did this – not only did they learn how to bake bread, but every student got to take home a free baking kit with the ingredients and recipe they’d need to bake their own loaves.

My son loved this!

7. Local Business Coupons and Free Passes

You can talk to local businesses where kids like to go, and ask if they have coupons to give to students for good behavior, OR, even free passes.

Then, your kids can earn these throughout the year.

Hint: start with the local businesses that tend to sponsor events at your school – at my son’s, this would be a local karate place, local food shops, the local Chick-fil-A, and local summer camp locations.

8. Cosmic Yoga Class Session

Can you borrow some mats from the gym teacher (or do this in the gym) and let your students earn a Cosmic Yoga session together?

Cosmic Yoga has some of the MOST fun yoga sessions for kids – totally free.

Fun + exercise + free = a win-win-win free class reward!

9. Wear a Hat in Class Day

Students can earn the right to wear a beanie or hat (or sombrero – why not?) during class for one day.

It’ll be fun to see what they bring in!

10. Card Game Tournament

Set up several stations around the room, and divide your class into groups of two or 4.

Gather as many decks of cards as you can from people you know, and choose one game for everyone to play.

Hold it as a tournament with brackets, if you’d like, where people progress along until there is 1-2 winners. You can still have the other players play one another as well.

Everyone will have a fun hour or so playing card games together – sure beats having to do more schoolwork!

11. Dice Roll for Favorite Activity Minutes

Can you get your hands on a bunch of dice?

Students usually have a favorite activity in a classroom. This reward can be earned throughout a semester or marking period, where you put a tick mark next to each child’s name for every dice that they earn a roll from.

On reward day, you go one-by-one and have each child roll the number of dice they earned (2, 5, 12, etc.).

Add up the total count, and that’s the number of minutes they earn doing their favorite activity in the classroom.

Something like:

• Reading a book of their choosing in a fun reading corner
• Picking a game to play
• Playing with certain art materials reserved for special times
• Etc.

P.S. I love this one, because there’s an element of earning a reward, AND, an element of luck…which makes it kind of irresistible!

I hope I've shown you that you don't need to spend money to make meaningful classroom rewards and incentives for your students. I'm sure you'll find something here that will get them really excited and motivate them to keep engaged with learning.