Inside Recess All Year Long!

Let me just speak for all of the teachers when I say it's been quite a month. During the whole month of January 2013 thus far, we've only had two days of outside recess. Why? Because it's been cold. Really cold. The rule is that we can't send 'em out unless it's at least 20 degrees or warmer. However, there's this other little glitch we have to think about. Air quality. If the air quality is not healthy enough due to the inversion, we still can't send 'em out. It's been hard on everybody. At first, we played a lot of board games. Then I invited my students to bring more and different board games from home, since they were getting sick of playing mine. We did jumping jacks in three languages. We marched in place. We played dance party music and danced. We stretched. One day we stayed in the gym after a school assembly, waiting for all the other classes to leave, so we could run a few sprints. Have you ever been cooped up with 34 fifth graders for an entire month?

And then I decided to let them craft. Oh boy. The glue supply has diminished. The craft paper is gone. What's left are the photos of their creativity. First up, the "Paper Clip Game" invented by one of my darling girls. Students happily played this game for days. I didn't ask them to make up games; they did it to keep themselves from going insane.

Next is an earthquake proof structure with a little art inspired by Klee:

On Tuesday, I mentioned my car accident from last Saturday. We get the newspapers on Tuesday, but I failed to notice the sticky coupons attached to the front page because I usually delegate students to pick the papers up and pass them out. Well, someone had this great idea that they should donate all of their car coupons to me so I could get a new car for free! They presented them to me with a sweet note at the end of the day. I was blown away at their thoughtfulness.

One of the really big hits was those classic "Fortune Tellers!" I swear, these things will never fade from the elementary school scene. I have now banned them from the classroom with heavy consequences should I see one, but honestly, they were so cute and so creative that before they took them all home on Friday, I took pictures--I saw a monkey, a bird, a snake...some were regular size and some were mini:

And let's not forget our old friend the "Ninja Star!"

January is almost in the rearview mirror and hopefully the kids will be able to go outside more often. Fourteen days of inside recess (morning recess and lunch recess) is plenty of time to be creative. In fact, it's enough time to invent new codes and languages! Bless those darling kids and their beautiful minds. They have been champs.