34. Surviving Indoor Recess: Simple Play Ideas That Won’t Drive You Crazy

Hey friends, welcome back to the Firstie Land podcast. I'm your host, Molly Schwab, and today we're tackling the topic indoor recess. I live in Ohio and I'm honestly not sure which recess I dislike more, indoor or outdoor. Because in Ohio, you never know what the weather's going to be like.

Kids can come to school in the morning in shorts and by noon it's pouring down rain or freezing outside. The weather here is just so crazy. In fact, I woke up this morning to about two inches of snow on the ground and we had no clue that it was going to snow overnight. I mean yesterday I was out shopping in just a hoodie and jeans and today it's snowing.

It's really crazy and so we just never knew if the kids would be playing inside or outside from day to day. But no matter where you live having a plan for indoor recess is necessary. You may live someplace that's below zero in the winter or maybe you have bad air quality or maybe you're just on duty and you don't feel good enough to go outside yourself. I mean, you never know

when you're going to have to let the kids play inside. So let's talk about some ways to do that without losing your sanity and so that indoor recess feels calm and not totally wild. Let's go. Hey teacher friends, are you ready to use read alouds more intentionally but you're not sure where to start? I've got you covered. Join my free winter read aloud challenge, a four week

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and make read alouds the easiest part of your day. So I'm a big believer the kids should be allowed to play during recess. They really need that time to just talk and laugh and be kids for a while. But that being said, if you're inside, you need it to be somewhat calm. You can't just

let kids go crazy running around the room and stuff like that. So the first thing you want to do is establish some kind of indoor recess rules. I think it's a good idea to sit down with your class and talk to them about this before you have your first indoor recess because they don't really know what to expect. When you say the word recess

to kids, all they know is that's when they get to play and be rowdy. And when they're outside, they can run around and shout and play tag and all that kind of stuff. But more than likely, you don't want that same behavior inside your classroom.

So take some time before you actually have indoor recess to talk about your expectations. You know, explain to kids that even though they're going to be playing, they're still inside the classroom, so they need to keep their voices a little quieter than unusual and they can't run around the room. Whatever your expectations are, you need to

let them know. Maybe make an anchor chart where you list your rules for indoor recess and bring it out on the days when your class is going to be inside and review it. That can really help to keep, you know, problems to a minimum. When I was teaching, we had one or two teachers on recess duty. So if it was your duty day and it was indoors,

we had to walk up and down the hallway monitoring all the classrooms because the The regular classroom teacher usually wasn't in their room. So the kids were in their rooms alone and they were playing. And it usually wasn't a huge problem, but having some kind of rules established ahead

of time is important. Like what do they do if they have to go to the bathroom? Or what do they do if a toy gets broken? Or it's missing pieces?

Or somebody isn't sharing? These are all the things to discuss before indoor recess begins. Okay. So the next thing you're going to want to do is decide what the kids are allowed

to do during indoor recess. Like I said before, I really think that kids should be able to play during recess. We've had days when I showed a movie, but I don't think it's a very good practice to do that all the time.

And my personal opinion is that computers or tablets should be off limits during recess. Honestly, I think kids get enough screen time at home and even during school and I personally feel like kids should be encouraged to be creative and just play during recess time.

So what kind of things can you have the kids do? Well, number one, I think anything where they get to create something is a good idea. I had an art center in my room and my kids were allowed to use that during recess and they could make anything they wanted to.

I had stuff like construction paper, watercolor paints, craft supplies like pipe cleaners and beads and stamps and stickers and toilet paper rolls and cotton balls, just all sorts of things. And the kids loved to go there and just create whatever they wanted to.

loved it and they knew that the only rule was they had to clean it up when they were done. Another great indoor recess activity is Play-Doh. Put some different colors of Play-Doh at a table along with a tub of cookie cutters or

Play-Doh toys and kids are going to entertain themselves for a long time with that. Another idea is any kind of building activities. Kids love magnetiles and Legos and building blocks and pattern blocks and Lincoln logs all stuff like that.

You can challenge them to see who can build the tallest tower or see if they They could build a little town, anything like that. If you get the kids the blocks, they're going to figure out what to do with them all on their own.

Alright, if you have math and literacy centers in your room, you could open those up during indoor recess time too. My kids used to love to go to the writing center during indoor recess. You know, every kid is different.

Some kids wanted to just play with toys, but there were always kids who liked to draw or color or write. And so having all your different centers open gives everybody a chance to do what they really enjoy. I used to go to garage sales during the summer and I was always looking for