Teacher Work Smarter Tip: Plan for Inside Recess Now [episode 151]

Emily  0:36

Hey, there, thanks for joining us. Today we are sharing our best teacher approved tips for inside recess and sharing some highlights from Episode 46, where we shared inside recess tips from other teachers.

Emily  0:49

So what can you tell us about inside recess, Heidi?

Heidi  0:52

Well, the temperature around here has been in the triple digits for weeks now. So if you’re like me, your memory may be a little fuzzy. But I promise you that eventually we’re going to get this thing called snow.

Emily  1:05

It feels hard to even like imagine that that will ever happen again. But it’s true. And with snow comes those dreaded words inside recess.

Heidi  1:14

Or maybe you’re in a situation where the heat is the problem and it’s too hot for the kids outside.

Emily  1:19

Yeah, that blacktop can get hot enough to burn skin for sure.

Heidi  1:23

And if you live where we do, you also have bad air quality days where the kids aren’t allowed out.

Emily  1:29

Yeah, all that to say there are definitely inside recess days in your future. So let’s do something about it.

Heidi  1:36

There are three reasons why you might want to jump on this now. First, assuming you’re not back in school, yet, you have more energy to put toward this problem now than you will in the winter. You can start rounding up ideas and putting together a Pinterest board or a list of fun suggestions.

Emily  1:53

Second, you’ve hopefully got a bit of time to do some shopping. You can visit thrift stores and dollar stores looking for cheap puzzles or games to fill your activity bin. And this time of year is probably a great time to check the dollar stores for things that would be perfect for this.

Heidi  2:08

And third, if there are certain supplies like board games or art supplies that you would like donated, you have time now to add them to your wish list.

Emily  2:18

a minute, we’re going to replay part of Episode 46, where we asked teachers to share their inside recess plans. One of the suggestions was for Michelle who made a different plan for each of the three recesses she has to fill.

Heidi  2:30

And that is such a good way to simplify the whole process. And such a good example of one and done, you know make one decision and you were done.

Heidi  2:41

When I taught second grade, I could have made the plan that anytime the kids couldn’t play outside before school, because the kids could come super early, they could just come into the class and draw or read. Those were their choices. And then for morning recess, we could get out the activity bin with games and puzzles and building toys.

Heidi  2:59

And then for lunch recess, the kids could choose between activities like basketball in the gym and movie in the library board games in the vestibule I didn’t have to manage them. And then my school didn’t have afternoon recess, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Emily  3:12

Not only does limiting the options each recess simplify your planning, but it helps keep the kids engaged. We don’t want them getting bored on the second day if you’ve got two more weeks of inside recess ahead of you.

Heidi  3:24

So make you plan now for what activities will be available for your inside recess. And keep listening for some great teacher approved suggestions.

Emily  3:33

And I just remembered I’m pretty sure one of the suggestions involves pool noodles. So yet another reason why you should shop now for later. Because those are hard to come by a January.

Heidi  3:44

I guess it’s that time of year we have moved from the magical sparkle of December to the cold gray slash of January.

Heidi  3:48

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.

Emily  4:21

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.

Heidi  4:38

In college I don’t think they ever taught us about planning for inside reset.

Heidi  4:41

Oh definitely not.

Emily  4:44

They never taught us the things we actually needed to do.

Heidi  4:47

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.

Emily  4:58

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.

Heidi  5:12

Well, I want to kick it off with Celeste’s tip because 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.

Emily  5:26

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.

Emily  5:41

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, drying methods, whiteboards, I only allow computer time during last recess, or my students would do that all day.

Heidi  6:07

That was such a smart idea to make a different plan for each reset.

Emily  6:10

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.

Heidi  6:28

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.

Emily  6:47

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.

Heidi  6:57

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.

Emily  7:12

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.

Heidi  7:32

I lucked out a little bit with this because we only had two recesses. And lunch recess was always covered by our wonderful techs and staff. So I didn’t have to provide for that.

Heidi  7:43

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 had three recesses, right, Emily?

Emily  8:01

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.

Emily  8:19

So I’m there with you if you had to cover all your recess. 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 was a young poor teacher, but I went and stocked up on games from the dollar store and some board games and card games.

Heidi  8:37

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.

Emily  8:47

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 lose pieces and they start to be less exciting if you have a lot of inside recess days.

Heidi  9:04

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.

Heidi  9:20

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 so taping all the boxes back together.

Emily  9:34

Yeah, sorting the pieces. If you don’t have a bin a set of plastic drawers would work great for storing rainy day activities.

Heidi  9:42

I did just see an idea to use one of those three tier carts with wheels that you can get at like Michaels or IKEA and you can use that to store your inside recess supplies and they had like a different shelf was devoted to different activity.

Emily  9:56

Oh, that’s cute.

Heidi  9:57

It was very cute. I don’t know how practical it is because those carts are that’ll. 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.

Emily  10:11

But before you can set up your storage, you need to know what you’re storing.

Heidi  10:15

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.

Emily  10:27

I think everyone’s favorite go-to whole class game, as pointed out by Tari is heads up seven up.

Heidi  10:34

It’s a classic for a reason.

Emily  10:36

I vividly remember playing it as a child element. If you somehow escaped elementary school without experiencing heads up seven up, definitely Google that one, because it’s real fun.

Heidi  10:49

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.

Emily  10:56

I don’t think I know this one. Oh, well, here you go.

Heidi  10:58

So you just start by designating four areas of the classroom, that could be corners, but maybe 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.

Heidi  11:16

And then we’ve made the rule that if you are not in a corner, by the time they get to 10, you’re out for that, right? 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.

Heidi  11:39

So technically, I think the game was supposed to go until there’s only one player left. But I found once kids have 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.

Emily  11:53

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?

Heidi  12:03

I love lazy lions, especially because it’s quiet.

Emily 12:06

Yeah, if you use 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.

Emily  12:25

The lion tamer walks around looking for any movement. If a lion moves, the lion tamer says Wilbur, I saw your foot twitch, 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 where two lions left and everybody else’s lion tamers.

Heidi  12:46

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.

Emily  12:59

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 played this before with my classes. It can be pretty tricky to hold a pose after a while though. So that one goes quicker. They think they’re lazy. Yes, yes. Something like balloon volleyball or silent ball are fun to play as well.

Heidi  13:25

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.

Emily  13:37

Oh absolutely. So that’s when technology can really come in handy.

Heidi  13:42

Go noodle the Go-To-G 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 a parent had an issue with it.

Emily  14:01

So yeah, mine that is a parent phone call you do not want to. The nice thing about this is you could preview stuff and start compiling a playlist on your phone while you’re watching TV at night. And then you’ll be ready to go when you have a snow day or a rainy day.

Heidi  14:17

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.

Heidi  14:32

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 run and skip and jump along with the characters in the story. I actually did it with your kids Emily during lockdown and it was to get them nice and tired and yes.

Emily  14:52

Besides movement videos, you could try how to’s like directed drawings or origami. My kids love those direct 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.

Heidi  15:16

Theresa recommends 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.

Emily  15:34

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.

Heidi  15:43

Yes, such a good idea.

Emily  15:45

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.

Heidi  15:53

Inside recess also lends itself to more creative activities.

Emily  15:58

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.

Heidi  16:09

And even if you don’t end up using on the inside recess, you know, you’re gonna need an activity someday. Maybe you got a sub maybe you don’t feel well.

Emily  16:15

Yeah, for sure.

Heidi  16:16

Yeah. And if you don’t want to do a whole group craft, you can just let the kids go where the music leads them.

Heidi  16:24

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 STEM challenge, I give the constraints of using only four items plus tape or glue to come up with a model of something useful.

Emily  16:46

They love it. 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.

Emily  17:04

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 to left it.

Emily  17:31

Each successive rotation brings that team to a more finished point of each game. If the game was won, then they begin anew. 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.

Emily  17:50

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.

Heidi  18:01

I definitely never would have come up with that on my own. No way. And I imagine it would be chaos with the little ones I don’t. I don’t know if like second graders can even handle. 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 I miss game, but then I’m totally hitting the next one, right?

Heidi  18:23

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 know how to teach the kids games they can teach you too.

Emily  18:42

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.

Heidi  18:52

I’m gonna I’m gonna stress.

Emily  18:54

Yeah, let them self direct. It’s just it’s inside recess. You take a break.

Heidi  18:59

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 instead recess.

Emily  19:10

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 recess doesn’t just have to be games.

Heidi  19:22

I know kids love using building toys and art supplies as well. Other teachers told us that their students love using Plato Lincoln Logs, coloring books, puzzles, ping pong. That one, the little mini bowling sets from the dollar store.

Emily  19:36

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.

Heidi  20:00

And if all else fails, just let them at your math manipulatives

Emily  20:03

Yep, those are basically toys with the learning goal.

Heidi  20:06

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 approved Facebook group.

Heidi  20:16

That’s it for today’s episode one and then you’re inside recess plans now while you still have the time and energy.