Don’t Skip Recess

It's really important for me to give my kids a real, outside, physical recess every morning. I know the temptation is to just push through and get things done, but I think that a solid 30 minute break mid-morning helps their brains internalize the knowledge and gets excess energy out. When the weather is anywhere remotely decent, I send them outside at 10:30 and do not let them back in until 11. (This was infintely easier this spring, when we lived next to another homeschool family who shared our commitment to outdoor play.) If it’s freezing cold or raining, we put on the La La Land soundtrack and dance or jump around and get our heart rates up. Morning recess is a bare minimum on top of lots of other active time throughout the day, and when we haven’t had much physical activity, I can definitely tell. Ideally, we’re playing hard at homeschool park days at least once or twice a week, plus riding bikes around the neighborhood and participating in organized sports or dance classes during non-pandemic times.

Sometimes a kid needs physical activity to get out of her head and change her mindset. Take the random winter day my 10 year old was giving me a really bad attitude about finishing her math even though I'd just let her go play outside in the snow for two hours and THEN had an hour long book club video chat with homeschool friends from out of state. She had had plenty of recess, but I sent her down to walk on the treadmill until she had a better attitude. Sure enough, she walked for a mile (something we'd been doing this winter while training for a kids' fun run) and came up with a better attitude, apologized for talking back to me, and calmly finished her math. That was maybe a 20 minute break, but it totally reset our afternoon. When I was teaching in the classroom, I had a lot of kids (mostly little boys, it seemed) who had ADD and ADHD to various degrees, and I would try to give them physical tasks or suddenly change things up with a jumping jacks game when I could tell they just needed to get some energy out. In our homeschool, we call them brain breaks, and if people are getting whiney or whatever, I yell, "Brain break!" and do something silly like the Funky Chicken dance or have everyone do ten burpees or have a jumping jacks or jump on the mini trampoline or have everyone crab walk across the house or whatever I think they will go for. I think it's best to do this between every subject.