Our Favorite Indoor Recess Ideas [episode 110]

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing all the best teacher approved tips for inside recess to help you survive those bad weather days.

Normally, we start our show with a morning message, but the question we asked our community this week got such a good response that we are devoting our entire episode to it. So let’s continue on with the show.

It’s time for the feedback of the week. Last week, our resource of the week was our spiral review morning work. This week, we’re sharing some amazing feedback that we recently received from a happy teacher who uses our morning work.

Chanel says, “I cannot say enough about this resource. It is the perfect morning work for us. It spirals each day, so it always reviews work as well. It touches on all skills and concepts. In fact, it has put us ahead of our curriculum. So when we hit those standards, my kids have already been introduced to them. Second Story Window thought of everything when they put this package together. You will not be disappointed with this purchase.

I recently had a substitute teacher who asked me about the morning work, she stated she never saw kids actually excited to do work. Our morning routine has been perfected with the addition of this gem, I can’t thank you enough for the hard work that obviously went into creating this bundle. Oh and parents are thoroughly pleased and impressed by what their tiny humans are learning.”

But wait, there’s more. Then she came back and shared even more when someone asked her a question about how she uses it. So she continued, “I use third grade. We complete our morning work together in whole group, so my littles who are approaching mastery aren’t intimidated at all. I project the page we’re working with onto the board and we complete each problem one at a time. I don’t rush through it at all. My kids are so ahead of the curriculum and performed extremely well on our end of year assessments.

Several pointed out to me that several questions reminded them of something they learned while doing their morning work. Second Story Window does such a great job at spiraling, the concepts become so familiar to them and they’re feeling a lot of successes when completing. My kids actually cheer when it’s morning work time. Just yesterday, our eighth grade ELA teacher stopped by and she was shocked that we were analyzing and coding sentences. My kids were so happy to show her what they knew. I know this reply is long, but I cannot sing the praises of this resource enough you will not be disappointed.”

That made me cry. I know. These morning works are our babies. And they each take many hundreds of hours to complete. So we feel really passionate about the content that’s created in them. So thank you Chanel for the amazing feedback. If you want to get these amazing results in your classroom to head to our show notes to take a look at our spiral review morning work for first, second, third and fourth grade.

I guess it’s that time of year, we have moved from the magical sparkle of December to the cold gray slush of January, it’s the worst. And in Utah, we have an additional hassle because we have to deal with air quality so the weather might be conducive to outside recess, but if the air is too clunky, it’s dangerous to breathe. Yay.

So students often have to stay inside in the winter because of our lovely air. In some years, bad air days can stretch for a week or more. And it’s the worst. So on top of dealing with storms and bad air you now have to deal with inside recess. All you want to do is run to the bathroom and have 10 minutes to regroup. But now you have to entertain 25 people who are even grumpier about being stuck inside than you are.

In college I don’t think they ever taught us about planning for inside recess. Definitely not shut down. Come on, they never taught us the things we actually needed to do. Right. So when I was suddenly in my classroom, I just did what my elementary teachers had done. So I just filled a bin with games and art supplies, and I just thought, that’s what everyone did. I thought that was the only solution. Yep.

And that does work. But it turns out, there’s lots of approaches to inside recess. We put out a call for inside recess tips in our Facebook group, and got lots of teacher approved suggestions we want to share with you today.

Well, I want to kick it off with Celeste tip because cuz I thought it was pretty appropriate. So her tip is to cry, which definitely resonated with me. But I bet we have got some tips that will dry those tears right up. Yeah.

To make it simple. We’ve organized the tips into five categories: planning and storage, whole class activities, technology, creativity and small group activities. And we’ve got at least four ideas for you in each category.

Let’s start with planning and storage. And to kick things off, we have this tip from Michelle, “I like to have a different plan for morning, lunch, and last recess. Morning or first recess is always a short video such as Magic School Bus or books, while students eat their snacks. Lunch recess is free choice: books, drawing, math tubs, whiteboards, I only allow computer time during last recess, or my students would do that all day.”

That was such a smart idea to make a different plan for each recess. I know, if you’re in for multiple inside recess days, the kids are going to get bored doing heads up seven up three times a day. So it really pays to plan for a variety of different types of activities. And then the kids know what to expect each recess if they’re in for the whole day for you and for them.

Another way to do that is to maybe coordinate with other teachers. And then you can offer different activities in each room, maybe one room has a dance video, and other room has checkers and other room has drawing whatever. And that way kids can still see their friends and other classes and then maybe get a little break from their classrooms. And it definitely cuts down on the planning. Oh, I love that idea.

But just make sure the kids know they have to pick a room and stick with it the whole recess or you’ll have them wandering around everywhere all recess long. Bless their hearts.

Another way to break up the inside recess monotony is to maximize other areas of the school. If your gym happens to be empty during your recess time, you can take your class in there and do something simple like line tag. Even if the gym isn’t available, you could consider checking out some PE equipment. Our school had a ton of hula hoops. I could have gotten enough for my class and then we could spend recess playing hula hoop games in an empty hallway or vestibule.

If you have to fill three recesses for several days, it will help to mix things up. I lucked out a little bit with this because we only had two recesses. And lunch recess was always covered by our wonderful Texan staff. So I didn’t have to provide for that. On inside days, there were different areas of the school that kids could choose. So you know, basketball was in the gym and there’s a movie in the library and card games in the lunch vestibule. And I didn’t have to manage any of that.

So I really only had morning recess that I was responsible for, but you have three recesses, right, Emily? I did, which on sunny days was fantastic. Inside recess days, probably a little less fantastic. But I did have to cover all three recesses. So with lunchtime, they would eat their lunch and then kind of wander back to my classroom. And I would have to entertain them for lunch recess, too. So I’m there with you if you had to cover all your recesses.

And I did kind of the same thing that you mentioned that the same thing we did growing up, which was I had a whole bunch of games I I was a young, poor teacher, but I went and stocked up on games from the dollar store and some board games and card games. And I think I remember us going to like Walmart on Black Friday or something to get because they had all these kid board games that were going to be on a great discount. Yeah, that sounds right.

So I stocked up on you know, Hungry Hungry Hippos and Connect Four and that kind of stuff. And it works fine. But they start to fall apart and loose pieces and they start to be less exciting. If you have a lot of inside recess days. Yeah, I did. Obviously the same thing with a bin and activities. My classroom came equipped with like a big bin that rolled under a cabinet and it was meant to store your playground equipment. But we had to store all of that in another place. So it could go to lunch. So I use that bin for inside recess activities.

And then cleaning and organizing the recess bin was always one of the end of year cleaning jobs for the kids to do because it needed it at the end of the year. Sure. Taping all the boxes back together. Yeah, sorting the pieces. Yeah. If you don’t have a bin, a set of plastic drawers would work great for storing rainy day activities.

I did just see an idea to use one of those three tier carts with wheels that you can get it like Michaels or IKEA and you can use that to store your inside recess supplies and they had like a different chair was devoted to different activities. Oh, that’s cute. It was very cute. I don’t know how practical it is because those carts are little. So I would probably go for the plastic drawers first because they’re a little bigger and then they can be closed fully. But if you know how much space that cart would be really handy to store stuff.

But before you can set up your storage you need to know what you’re storing. Maybe instead of managing a bunch of little activities, just for simplicity sake, you want everyone to do the same thing. So let’s dive into some suggestions for whole class activities.

I think everyone’s favorite go to whole class game, as pointed out by Tari is heads up seven. It’s a classic for a reason, I vividly remember playing it as a child in elementary school. If you somehow escaped elementary school without experiencing heads up seven up, definitely Google that one, because it’s real fun.

Four Corners is another go to. And my students actually had to teach me this one because I didn’t play it in school growing up, I don’t think I know this one. Oh, well, here you go. So you just start by designating four areas of the classroom, that could be corners, but make your classroom doesn’t have four corners. Who knows. So you have corner one, corner, two, so on, and then you choose one student to be it and they turn away from the group cover their eyes. And you know, as they count to 10, all the other kids have to scramble to a corner.

And then we made the rule that if you are not in a corner, by the time they get to 10, you’re out for that. Because they would, they would try to take their time to try and work it to the advantage anyway. So then, after counting to 10, it calls out a corner like corner three, and then everyone in corner three has to return to their seats.

And then it turns around and counts again while the remaining players choose corners. So technically, I think the game is supposed to go until there’s only one player left. But I found once kids had been sitting for a few rounds, they start to get antsy. And the point of recess is to get some of the antsy out so I just tended to restart the game with a new it before everyone got out. That sounds super fun. And it’s a good idea to not have to make most of the class wait for everybody to get out before they can play again.

And did you ever do Lazy Lions? I love Lazy Lions especially because it’s quiet. Yeah, if you used our reindeer games freebie, back in December, we had a version of this with sleeping mice. So Lazy Lions is the non festive version of the game.

To play one child is chosen as the lion tamer. The rest of the kids are lions and they spread out around the room and pretend to sleep. The lion tamer walks around looking for any movement. If a lion moves, the lion tamer says, “Wilbur, I saw your foot wwitch, Wilbur” or whatever, and then Wilbur hops up to work as a lion tamer as well.

The game continues until there’s only one lion or two lions left and everybody else’s lion tamers and lazy lions is another one where I tended to stop once there were only a few players left. Yeah, otherwise you ended up with like 20 kids surrounding one kid and trying to get them to move. Yeah, so it’s just definitely more fun to choose a new Lion Tamer and then restart the game.

Yeah, there’s another version of this that’s more challenging called Statues. So instead of laying down, the kids have to choose a statue position to freeze in while the museum guard walks around, and I know I’ve played this before with my classes. It can be pretty tricky to hold the pose after a while though. So that one goes quicker they think than Lazy Lion. Yes, yes.

Something like balloon volleyball or silent ball are fun to play as well. My personal rule for inside recess is that I don’t choose anything that I have to put much effort into facilitating. I’m the teacher not the cruise director and I need a break as much as the kids do. Oh, absolutely.

So that’s when technology can really come in handy. Go noodle the GO TO GO noodle it has a whole section dedicated to inside recess. And you can find videos like Just Dance on YouTube or Teacher Tube. Just absolutely make sure to preview everything before you show it to your class. Someone at my school got in trouble for that. Like it wasn’t bad, but apparently had an issue with it. So yeah, mind that is a parent phone call you do not want to get.

The nice thing about this is you could preview stuff and start compiling a playlist on your phone while you’re watching TV one night and then you’ll be ready to go when you have a snow day or a rainy day.

And I’d like to put in a little plug for one of my favorites, which is called Adventure to Fitness. It’s part of the adventure to learning website. It used to be totally free for teachers now I think it’s part of a subscription, but you can still find some of the videos for free. Each episode takes you on some kind of like Indiana Jones type adventure that teaches kids about volcanoes or ancient Rome and everyone has to read and skip and jump along with the characters in the story.

I actually did it with your kids Emily during lockdown and it was quick to get them nice and tired. Yes. Besides movement videos, you could try how-tos like directed drawings or origami. My kids love those directed drawing videos. I think that channel is called Art Hub for Kids or Art for Kids Hub. I always get it mixed up because I think it sounds like it should be one but it’s actually the other but if you look on YouTube, I’m certain you’ll find it and my kids really liked doing those directed drawings.

To recess recommend something I’ve never heard of before called pool noodle drumming. And that’s a mouthful loved this idea. She says that the students use their desks or chairs and she pulls videos from YouTube. They love it. I save it for inside recess only. So they are super excited when we have inside recess.

I love that idea of having something that’s really special that you only do it inside recess so that instead of inside recess, feeling like a bummer, it’s actually exciting. Yes, such a good idea. There are so many online games you can play as a class or on individual devices. Kahoot has tons of just for fun trivia games.

Inside recess also lends itself to more creative activities. The nice thing is you could totally plan and prep a craft activity ahead of time. So when you get the announcement, you’re all ready to go. Remember that gift to your future self that we always talk about that would be one of those. And even if you don’t end up using on inside recess, you know, you’re going to need to on some day, maybe you got a sub maybe you don’t feel well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And if you don’t want to do a whole group craft, you can just let the kids go where the day leads them. Cindy recommends keeping an art box. She says, “I have always kept an art scrap box with salvaged bits from prior projects. With added recycled treasures such as egg cartons and yogurt containers washed out of course. In a STEAM challenge, I give the constraints of using only four items plus tape or glue to come up with a model of something useful. They love it.”

That’s so fun. One way to keep inside recess interesting is to incorporate activities for small groups. Cindy, who also recommended the art box recommended this board game rotation which I thought was an interesting take on playing games in your classroom for inside recess.

She says, “Another tried and true idea is to create a rotating board game challenge. Divide up the class in groups of four and assign a board game: Trouble, Sorry, Chutes and Ladders etc. Set a timer for evenly divided time slot so all can experience each game. So say your time slot is four minutes, team one begins Trouble and leaves the board as is when the timer ends. Then they rotate to Sorry and pick up the game where team two left it. Each successive rotation brings that team to a more finished point of each game.

If the game was won, then they begin a new game. The fun of this is to pick up and see if your next rotation has you winning or losing. The teacher management of this is to have each student choose their players color and stick with that choice for each rotation. This presentation of game day eliminates common problems like boredom, complaints that they didn’t get the game they wanted, and the wiggles. It also teaches good sportsmanship and problem solving.”

I definitely never would have come up with that on my own. No way. And I imagined it would be chaos with the little ones. I don’t know if like second graders can even have that. Sure. But I can see older kids really getting into this especially like the chance of like, oh is ahead this time. And now I’m losing or the opposite of like, Yeah, I’m losing in this game, but then I’m totally adding the next one, right?

You don’t need a whole library of games, though. If that’s not something that is feasible for you. As Denise points out, regular playing cards can be enough. She says, “A deck of cards, all ages love card games, and they teach each other and I think that’s a key is that I found you don’t have to teach the kids games, they can teach each other.”

Yeah, someone will know how to play a game and they are happy to teach other students assuming they actually can remember the rules. A lot of times they think they know the rules, but maybe they don’t want to stress. Yeah, let them self direct. It’s just it’s inside recess. You take a break.

You saw another recommendation from one teacher who just collected Checker games when they were on sale, or when she found them at thrift stores. And then her class would do Checker tournaments as part of their inside recess. Oh that’s so fun. Checkers is a nice one to collect because you can find those games everywhere. I know even the Dollar Store carries them and the cheap ones don’t take up too much space.

But inside reasons doesn’t just have to be games. No kids love using building toys and art supplies as well. Other teachers told us that their students love using Play-doh, Lincoln Logs, coloring books, puzzles, ping pong out of that one, the little mini bowling sets from the dollar store. Oh, that’s so fun.

And Lauren mentioned printing out coloring pages of the characters that they’re really into right now like Gabby’s Dollhouse or something like that. I thought that was so clever. And don’t forget about masking tape with a few rolls of tape and an open floor kids can design hopscotch courts, Tic Tac Toe games, mazes or obstacle courses that would keep them happily entertained for several recesses.

And if all else fails, just let them at your math manipulatives Yep, those are basically toys with the learning goals. So we’re gonna let them play. If you have some other ideas for inside recess, we would love to hear them over in our teacher approve Facebook group

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is ask for recess activity donation.

If you are looking to round out your indoor recess options, just go ahead and ask for them. You can hint to parents that you absolutely don’t expect any gifts for Christmas or Teacher Appreciation. But if they are looking for something to give, games for inside recess would be appreciated.

I did that my first few years of teaching and I got some games that lasted my whole time that I was teaching in second grade, the boxes got trashed, but the games were so good. And as a parent, it’s always helpful to know what teachers need. And it’s nice to give a gift you know your child will be using.

And you could also put out requests for items families might be clearing out. Let people know that if they have old Legos that they might be getting rid of, or maybe some games that their families don’t play that you and your students can put them to good use. Oh, that’s a good idea.

To wrap up the show, we’re sharing what we are giving extra credit to this week. Heidi, what are you giving extra credit to? My extra credit is going to the three tiered wheeled cart from Michaels. We mentioned it earlier as a way to store inside recess activities. But Emily and I last month each got one that’s formatted as a wrapping car and it has been great.

Well, Emily had a little mix up. Yes, seriously, if you get this, don’t assemble the whole thing without double checking that you have the right cart because somehow my box had the right cart on the outside and the wrong cart on the inside. And we did not notice we had assemble the whole thing. So keep an eye on that. They did swap it out for her to go in. Yes. And I had already assembled but I have any problems me because I bought it in the store.

Yeah, I got it on sale. And it really was just so handy for wrapping all of the Christmas presents. And then they just you know, wheeled it back to my closet. I had kind of like been trying to justify the Container Store wrapping cart. That’s like $200 but I think I got this one on sale for like $30. Well, mine was not that cheap. It was on sale, but not that cheap. Yeah, I was I was in there. Lucky. I did. It was right around Thanksgiving. So got the good sales.

If you are interested in a wrapping cart, the model from Michaels is the Gramercy Rolling Cart. And we will make sure to put a link to that in the show notes. Yeah, hoping to make Neil helped me put that together. today. We have a camper.

Okay, Emily, what’s your extra credit? I’m giving extra credit to Emily in Paris. I feel I feel a little silly, giving extra credit to a show that’s already massively popular, and not exactly an amazing storyline, the writing could be better. And yet, I just really enjoy it. I think I enjoyed season three more than the first two. The costumes and sets are just visually gorgeous. And Paris is just such a beautiful setting for a show that I’m always just enjoying the scenery of every scene.

One of the episodes this season is set in Provence, and it was literally stunning. It’s as close as I’m going to be getting to traveling to France anytime soon, so I guess I’ll take it. Maybe Maybe I’ll have to give this a try. Let me know what you think.

That’s it for today’s episode. Make a plan for inside recess success so those bad weather days don’t catch you by surprise. And don’t forget our teacher approved tip for asking parents to donate inside recess activities. Be sure to check out our show notes for links to anything we’ve mentioned. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a teacher friend. Recommendations are one of the top ways people discover new podcasts.