Movement breaks are very important for children within the school environment. Movement allows children to remain focused on academic tasks and improves their brain functioning.
If it is too cold outside for recess, there are options for indoor movement games:
- Four Corners
- The teacher labels four corners of the classroom and makes a giant square out of the four corners. One student is chosen to cover their eyes and count to ten, while the other children must move to one of the four corners very quietly. Once the child is finished counting, they choose a corner (with their eyes still closed). Anyone standing in the chosen corner must sit down. The rest of the remaining students move to other corners until there is one student remaining.
- Balloon or Foam Ball Games
- The students can play balloon volleyball, badminton, hot potato, or the silent game with a foam ball or balloon. This allows them to move around the classroom and have fun, while engaging with one another.
- Brain Gym Activities
- These are short activities teacher can perform with their students to release stress, expend excess energy, and enhance learning opportunities.
- Figure 8s: Students draw figure 8s either in the air with their fingers or on a piece of paper. When students use their non-dominant hand to draw the figure 8, it engages the creativity portions of the brain and drawing figure 8s with the dominant hand loosens up the muscles in the arm and wrist, and serves to ready students for writing essays.
- Cross Crawl: Students touch their left elbows to their right knees while their right arms moves behind them, as if marching. Then students touch their right elbows to their left knees while their left arms move behind them. Students continue to shift back and forth between the two positions for approximately two minutes.
- The Hot/Cold Game
- The students pick one student to go out into the hallway and the other students hide an object from inside of the classroom. When the student returns, the student from the hallway must figure out what object within the classroom is missing. The other students give he/she clues to whether she is hot or cold.
- Go Noodle
- This is a website with interactive videos and games. The games are categorized to help children focus, get energized, release excess energy, or calm themselves down. Each game is only a few minutes long, so the child has time to play multiple games.
- Charades
- Have children act out and guess animals or characters from books you’ve read together or other lesson concepts you’ve discussed in class. Have the children write their own charades action on index cards so all children can be creative and participate in the game.
- Musical Chairs
- This game can be played with chairs or without chairs using a carpet or small piece of construction paper to lay on the floor. Each student starts on a chair or carpet and when the music starts, they move around the chairs/carpets and once the music stops, they need to sit on the floor or chair. This continues until there is one winner.
- Yoga and Stretching
- These activities help student release their energy and increase their focus and attention. The teacher can choose different poses to hold for 2-3 minutes. There is also yoga pose options on Go Noodle.
- Captain’s Orders
- Select one child to be the captain and they will stand at the front of the classroom. The other children (the ship’s crew) will stand in a straight line, facing their captain. The captain issues commands to the crew and the crew must keep up. The faster the captain performs the calls, the more difficult and fun the game becomes. Some commands include, “captain on deck”, where the crew must quickly salute the captain and “raise the sails”, where the crew pretends to be pulling on a rope.
- Freeze Dance Party
- Most children love to dance or be silly with their friends and this is a great way for children to release their energy. This game is usually productive for short periods of time, generally no more than 5-7 minutes. The teacher plays music and stops the song randomly and the students need to freeze until the music begins to play again.
- Sensory Paths
- Sensory paths can be made in a hallway or within a classroom. A sensory path helps the students reduce stress, increase energy levels, increases social skills, physical mobility, cognitive function, increases the student’s ability to maintain their focus in class, and offers the children proprioceptive feedback to their bodies. Sensory paths have motor activities throughout them such as wall push-ups, yoga poses, and crab walking.
- Hopscotch
- A fun game to play where players toss a small object into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and the players then hop or jump through the spaces to retrieve the object. This game is fun and allows the children to be active.
- Zip-It to Rip-It Zoom Ball
- This is a fun and active way for children to release their energy. The two players pull the handles to send the ball hurling toward the other player. This game works on gradation of force, bilateral integration skills, hand-eye coordination skills, and core and arm strength.
- Twister
- This fun, interactive game is played on a large plastic mat that is spread on the floor or ground. The players spin a wheel that has colors, a hand, and a foot on it. Whatever color or body part they spin is what they place on the mat (i.e. right hand on blue). This game allows the players to be active, test their strengths, and have fun.
Simple indoor recess games:
- Legos
- Board games
- Play dough
- Arts, crafts, coloring
- Simon says
