Wednesday Weekly Wisdom: The Dreaded Indoor Recess

It's that time of year that we all love and look forward to dread to see come...time that you have to have indoor recess.  We are lucky enough to have a few days during the winter to go out, but they are few and far between!  We wanted to discuss today some of the ways that we have found to entertain the kiddos when you just can't make it outside to the playground.

iPods:  Now don't get jealous, but our school has furnished each teacher with a cart of 25 iPods.  These are intended for educational use only, but, being the geniuses that we are, we have found ways around that.  Some how, Temple Run ended up installed (wonder how that got there!), and our kids were hooked.  We were too, but that's another story.  So, we thought about ways to use this app for education.  One problem we were having was that the kids could not tell who was winning when they compared school.

LIGHT BULB MOMENT FOR US!!! Let's turn this into a Place Value Lesson/Game.

So, we have "tournaments" for Temple Run.  This would work for any game that gives a final score.  The students are given a time limit (usually 10-15 minutes).  They can play as many games as they want on that app.  Each time they get a score, they take a screen shot of the score.  When the timer goes off, they find their highest score.  Then all students must line up in order from lowest to highest.  If time allows, we take the top kids, and they compete in another round.  The kids love it, and they are SILENT for at least the 10 minutes!  

Wurdle is another good app to do the same thing, but with Language Arts.

Adventure to Fitness:  Brenda stumbled on this site through Pinterest.  You have to create a user account, but it is free.  Students are led to follow a guy through a physical activity episode.  They last 30 minutes and also contain educational lessons.  You can download activities to accompany each episode.  They only change the new episodes once a week, but you can access the archives.  WARNING:  Some of the movements (running in place, jumping, etc.) may get a little loud!

Wii: As a reward, Whitney has brought her Wii to school.  Just Dance is available in the $1 renting boxes that are red!  We allow 2-4 students to use the remotes to get a high score, but the whole class can follow along.  Some of the videos for these are also on You Tube, if you can access that at your school.

What are your ideas for indoor recess?  What has worked in your classroom?