Timing Tuesday: Activities for those early finishers and how to present them

Pinterest addict as I am, I found this idea a while ago - challenge capsules. Heard of them? The idea is that when students finish early, they grab a challenge capsule to keep them busy and quiet enough for the rest of the class to continue working. Depending on your personal pedagogy and professional beliefs, you may choose to include additional activities or a bit of fun. As a relief teacher, I never know what grades I am going to be in from day to day. Considering this, I chose a range of open-ended questions and activities which range from word games to creative writing activities to poster designing. The aim is that these challenges allow for diversity in skill levels and will provide an interesting challenge for all. This freebie will be attached in this post, but first the all important question of how to present these challenges.

Typically, searching for the challenge capsules, you will see a picture similar to this:

This originated from Mrs Gold's Class and works fine. It's practical, quick and simple to put together and use. An idea from Teacher's Pet is to create challenges for different ability levels or grades and colour code them. This enables you to tell them 'grab a blue capsule' and know that they will be choosing an appropriate challenge. You could also do this for different subjects or types of challenges.

Then I came across a pretty variation (I thought on a blog, though I can't find it now! Lesson learned: always save amazing ideas as soon as they are spotted). Creating a candy dispenser for the capsules. Now I'm not one to say that everything has to be cute, so really throwing the capsules in a bowl would work just as well. However, I love the idea of a candy dispenser as candy can be a common choice of reward (not something I personally practice) and it adds a novelty value to the capsules, associating them with rewards. Here are three examples of D.I.Y. candy dispensers which could be used.

Made using a jar and chicken feeder, the decorative limitations barely exist. You can find the instructions over at U Create.

Again, this simple container can be decorated endless ways. I have seen spots, cartoon characters and holiday themes. Check out the tutorial at Tammy Mitchell Designs.

Here is a super easy one using three disposable cups! Twisting the top cup opens and closes the opening as well. Well  worth the try, this tutorial can be found at Heidi Swapp.

Enough ideas yet? I think not! Just in case the idea of challenges in capsules in candy dispensers doesn't get your creative wheels turning, try re-thinking the advent calendar. There are creative options everywhere online. In fact there are so many that I dare not try to cover them all, but I'll show you a few I love. Again, you can decorate as you like, whether cutesy or simple AND as advents often include multiple sections, you can easily group or label them according to subject, difficulty level, time required, etc. I've tried to keep the examples small or easily movable due to the constant moving of relief teaching. Click on the pictures for tutorials on the original page.

Sew it or use envelopes.
A Beautiful Mess

Matchbox drawers could fit dice
 and other small resources.
Creative "Try" Als

Shaped stacks of matchboxes.
All About You

Use envelopes as suggested or
write on the back of pretty paper.
Serenity Now

Reinvent or redecorate a
refillable advent calendar.
Rookie Mums

With brown paper bags, you
could even include small group games.
One Perfect Day

And finally, here is the freebie I offered to start with. Three pages of open-ended challenges to start you off. Please note that I did use the puzzles I found here, here and here.

Any more ideas for early finishers? Any creative beings out there have another possible way of presenting activities? Please share!