How my name became unpronounceable.

This week I asked Hive Mind to assist me in my teaching. It will not be the last time. Honestly, I don't know what teachers did before the Internet. Stuck for ideas, how did they face the challenge of designing a spelling activity for second graders in the days when one couldn't just do a Google search on "spelling activities for second graders"?
I feel like the woman in that old commercial who pats flour on herself to fool dinner guests into thinking she slaved over the making of baked goods. My painstaking spelling-activities quest, all three minutes of it, took me to a site that creates word searches. First step: come up with a title for your puzzle. This part of the process was the hardest for me, I think; I finally opted for "Spelling!" I then typed in all twenty of this week's spelling words and noted with amusement (and gratitude) that the puzzle generator promised to use a randomly-created-offensive-word filter as it merrily sprinkled letters around. And here was a nice touch: I could put in a hidden message that would be revealed as the spelling words were found. I chose the propaganda route and hid the phrase "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pancella."
I gave the students the word search today. When I passed out the papers, I explained about the hidden message, showing them how there were dashes at the bottom of the page--"_ ___ __ _____ ________ ____ ____ ________"--for the phrase they were looking for.
The next fifteen minutes were a bit of a free-for-all. Some second graders seem to have something of a word search instinct; others need more prodding. There was much collaborating at tables and some wandering around the room. I didn't mind how they worked on the puzzle so long as they were looking closely at what letters made up the words. The point wasn't to complete a puzzle; the point was to get more familiar with the topography of English.
I did take note of who first found all of the words. I went over to walk him through the finding of the hidden message, since "Use, in order, the letters that are not circled" is an abstract concept. He got pretty far before I was called away to help another student. When I got back, I discovered he was doing fine before he skipped a row; he had written "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pfhrzlbc."