Cake Walk Freebie

It rained today.

I had two thoughts.  

1.  Hello, fall!  FINALLY!  I’m cold!  I need a jacket!  This is wonderful!  (That’s actually a lot of thoughts, but they are all on the same train of thought so it counts as one.)

Then I got to school and I had this thought:

2.  I want to go home.

I’m finally here after a long day of students suffering from apparent urinary tract infections because the majority of my class had to go to the bathroom all day.  In the rain.  And then when they returned, they had to report that it was raining.  Because even though I have four big windows, we had no idea.

I’m trying to finish up report cards, grade a math test, a Social Studies test, some writing, and finish filing all this stuff for parent conferences which are up and coming.

In other words, kill me now.

I haven’t been able to blog stalk as much as I like, and I definitely need to get on it because my next unit in Science is Matter, and I am not a fan.  I know blogs and pinterest will be able to help me in this area, but I have NO TIME!!!  

In the midst of all of this lack of time, I made up a fun game.  

Yep.  Just made-it-up.  Like-that.  Bam.  

I was reading Junie B. Jones and The Yucky Blucky Fruitcake (which happens to be one of my all time favorite Junie B.’s because of the whole Bulls Eye! incident, but I’ll refrain from telling you the whole story in case you haven’t read it yet) and inspiration struck.

Junie B. was doing the Cake Walk in her very own room 9 when it hit me!

I want to do a Cake Walk in my room!!

Except there won’t be any cake.  (Well, there might be, but I’m not sharing with the kids.)

So I went home, inserted some numbers into a document, printed them, LAMINATED THEM, (more to come on that in a different post, but you should know I’m a big fancy pants here at my house with a brand new laminator.  Uh huh!) cut them in half, and took them back to school.

THEN . . . I made a path of numbers around my room.  I only used numbers 1 – 10 and printed a couple of sets so that I would have duplicates and triplicates (A couple of 8’s, three 4’s, etc).  I made sure to only have 25 numbers out (YES!  Only 25 because that’s all that came to school today.  The rest must have stayed home in their pjs like I wanted to do!).  But if all 30 had been there, I would have put out 30 numbers.  

NEXT . . . I played music as the students got in a line and followed the path around the room.  Some danced.  Some walked.  No one was allowed to run.  For obvious reasons.  I disco-ed because I was playing the Disco playlist on my iPod.   

When I stopped the music, the kids had to stop next to a number.  

The best part???  No one was out!  Everyone got a number.  YES.  What a relief.  No whining!  

Then I pulled a number out of a hat.  Well, it wasn’t actually a hat. And it wasn’t actually written down.  I just pulled a number out of my head.  In the future, I think I’ll be more prepared and have numbers written down on something and pull them out of a hat.  Or a bag.  Or something.  But whatever.  I was new to this.  And making it up as I went along.  Sort of like a typical day in my classroom.  It’s a rare occasion when this happens.

I yelled, “EIGHT!”

And the two or three kids standing next to the number 8 (remember I had duplicates and triplicates of the numbers) had to answer a question.

Today, I asked students review questions based on our Transportation-Long-Ago-Compared-And-Contrasted-To-Today-Or-Something-Like-That-Unit.  

The reason I wanted two or three kids to answer the same question was to provide an opportunity for all students to hear the answers more than once.  Also, if I knew that one of my kids would struggle with an answer, I would ask the other kid with the same number the question first.  In that way, the struggling student could hear the correct answer and echo the answer.  

It was a lot of fun and super successful!  SHOCKING!  

I learned two things that I had not anticipated.

If I said 10, my kids would NOT want to stand next to number 10 on the next go-around because they were sure I would not call it out again.  

SMART COOKIES, these firsties.

So, of course, I had to call number 10 again just to call their bluff.  

They might be smart cookies, but I’m old.

The other thing I learned was that some kids were just lucky and got on the numbers I happened to call several times.  So they got lots of turns, whereas someone else seemed never to get a turn because they kept standing next to numbers I didn’t call.

So, of course, I had to rig it and call out numbers next to those kids.  Sometimes, I had to do it under the guise of tying a shoe so I could see what number they were standing on or near.  And sometimes, I wasn’t subtle and just said, “Johnny, what number are you on?”  

Fun was had by all.

They begged to play again tomorrow.

I think we’ll use it for verbs or nouns or some such thing.  I don’t know.  I could use it for anything.

I call it Cake Walk.  In honor of Junie B.  She’s my inspiration.  And the wind beneath my wings.

I made the numbers super quick last night.  They’re not that fancy. But I have the numbers and the directions for you, if you want to grab them.

But you have to go on a little Cake Walk of your own first.

You’ve got to go visit Freebie-licious!  I’m a new contributor over there and it’s a blog just for PK-1 freebies! 

Head on over there to grab your freebie if you want it!  🙂  And become a follower so you don’t miss out on any other freebies!

Alright – I’m off to do some work.  

Yucky Blucky Fruitcake Work.  Bleck.