What can you do when your students finish early?! It's so easy!

Have students complete a puzzle! I came up with this idea when I was shopping for Christmas presents and saw this awesome puzzle in the store! I had no one to buy it for and then it suddenly hit me - I could challenge my 5th graders with this!

I introduced this to them last week with just a two rules:

1. Only 5 people are allowed to work on it at a time
2. You can work on it if you arrive early to school (way less on my tardy list now!) or if you finish your work early.

I started out by guiding them with suggestions of separating the edges and working on that first, but they sort of ignored me and did their own thing! I love it! There is so much wonderful learning happening with this! Also, if it can help get them here on time, I am all for it!

*It's 1,000 pieces and when it's completed, we will frame it and hang in our classroom library because it is a fantastic picture of a library with all kinds of cool characters from books.