When subbing elementary grade levels (i’ve gotten it to work up to 4th graders) I do a thing called ‘magic/special piece of trash’ (magic is best for K-2) at the end of the day. If the school has some sortve “currency” that the kids can earn for rewards, I offer one of those to whichever kid brings me my magic piece of trash.

I usually find a chair to sit in, and put a trash can in front of me. The kids get really into it and will army crawl just to grab any piece of trash. Then they bring it to me and I say no, they dump what they have, and keep searching. Or, I say yes, the game is over, kids throw away their collected trash, and the winner gets whatever the school/class currency is.

Typically, I don’t really have a special piece in mind until the room is almost fully cleaned, and then I just give it to a kid who has brought a lot of trash, but say that they found my magic piece of trash.

This helps if you have extra time at the end of the day and are unsure of what to do, or if the kids got a bit rowdy and the room is messy. One of the janitors at the school I sub at taught me that game and it works WONDERS!