Provide students with the monthly average rainfall and/or temperature in your city or state (or have them investigate).
Have students identify as many careers as they can in a set amount of time.
Have students identify careers in which people wear uniforms.
Call out sports teams (baseball, football, hockey, etc.) and have students identify the city and state they play in.
Call out capitals and have students match them with the state.
Call out states and have students name the capital.
Start with short distances and increase the distance as students get more proficient at doing the math and identifying locations.
Have students figure out the distance between two cities on a map using the scale.
Challenge students to identify where various geographic locations (continents, countries, cities, landmarks, bodies of water, etc.) are on a large map.
Ask questions such as "What costs more this week, a head of lettuce or three cucumbers?" "Do you think a mattress costs more or less than a cell phone?"
Use the newspaper or a supermarket circular to create your own version of The Price Is Right.
Go around the room and ask students to name foods, cities, countries, boys' names, or girls' names in A-B-C order.
Invite student groups to add the numbers in their phone numbers, ages of family members, or street addresses.
This game is easy to adapt to a particular content area, unit of study, or student interest. You can also play the game by asking students to identify countries, cities, bodies of water, plants, animals, vegetables, authors, fairy tale characters, weather conditions, cars, television shows, or movies.
Play a guessing game that challenges individual students or teams of students to identify as many historical figures as they can in a set period of time.
Until then, these ideas will keep students involved and learning when there are unexpected minutes to fill. As the year continues, you'll develop many sponge activities of your own based on the lessons you are teaching. Most of the activities can be done independently, in teams, or as a class, depending on your needs. Sponge activities soak up those in-between minutes with easy-to-implement challenges that motivate students to stretch their minds in new directions.
That's where "sponge activities" come into play. No matter how well you plan out the day, there are going to be times when you have to quickly and creatively fill up a 5 to 10-minute gap in the schedule.