This is what happens when you are spontaneous...

On Thursday the Spanish teacher was sick. This left me with 45 minutes to entertain my students since they didn’t have related arts.

I looked

 through craft books

online

for puzzles

for reading activities

I found nothing…

so I decided to take my class outside to play. They are a very active group so I thought this would be a good way to get some of their energy out.

As we are headed to the playground, one of my boys asks if we can go down to the lake.

I hadn’t been to the lake yet and was curious as to what was down there.  I agreed to let the kids play at the lake as long as they promised not to get close to the water. They promised so we headed down the hill!

I was pleasantly surprised to find a lake, fire pit, and pavilion at the bottom of the hill.

I let the kids play there for a while (which consisted of putting on a show in the pavilion, hopping over logs at the fire pit, and seeing who could throw a rock the farthest into the lake). When the class was ready to go to the playground, we started our hike through the woods.

The best part of the trail was stumbling upon a cross about halfway to the playground. We stopped and talked about it for a few minutes then continued on our journey.

We finally reached the playground. My kids felt so successful! They had accomplished their goal of making it through the woods and had a great time in the process.

This is one time when being flexible and spontaneous has paid off!