A spur of the moment Word Study game and Measurement Olympics

I found a word study center idea on Pinterest a while back... slap the word.  I always wanted to do it and finally decided to throw it in my Word Study center this week.  I had the paper all ready of Friday afternoon, but didn't get a chance to make it as I had a flight to catch away for the weekend.  I came in this morning and saw it and thought to myself, ugh I didn't get the fly swatters to slap the words... as teachers do, I thought quick.  I decided to still write down the name and give the kids two different color cube.  Whoever could build the word with their cubes and cover it first won the word.  The person with the most words covered at the end wins.  This added the spelling aspect to the sight words.  It is a three player game... one caller of the words and two students competing on building and covering the words first.  I think its a keeper!

We are in our last week or our measurement unit.  In first grade they learn non-standard measurement (I'm not going to lie, I throw in standard measurement too).  My team member shared a math olympics with us to do this week.  It has been fun! We have shot put (throwing a cotton ball), long jump, high jump, discus throw (throwing a paper plate) and the javelin throw (throwing a straw).  They mark where they started and then where they ended.  I had them use cubes and rulers to measure.  

I find cubes to be a pain to measure long distances so I put together the cubes in groups of tens so they could just count by tens.... SOOO much quicker!  We will continue our Olympics tomorrow!  We are keeping trace of current gold, silver and bronze medalists as we go.