Physical Activities and Games

Physical Activities and Games

Sure, art projects are fun, but sometimes your students need to get out of their seats and get moving. So what do you do for indoor recess when your kids need to get rid of some energy? To provide a fun recess while boosting students’ physical health and gross motor skills, try one of the indoors recess activities below. As a bonus, most of these games require no equipment.

Directed Dancing

A classroom dance party is a great way to get students active. Put on a dance video and let kids twist, jump and shake it off to the music. Ribbon or scarf dancing is also fun.

For a little more peer involvement, you can have your kids do freeze-dance games like the Wax Museum Challenge. In this activity, one student acts as the guard, standing at the front of the classroom with their back turned. Other students dance silently, getting as crazy as they wish — but when the guard turns around, they have to freeze! Any student the guard catches moving, talking or laughing is out.

Hopscotch

You don’t need to go outside to play hopscotch — just use masking tape to create a hopscotch outline on the floor and use a beanbag or other soft object instead of a rock.

Musical Chairs

Arrange your classroom chairs in a circle, find some upbeat music to start and stop, and you’re on your way to an easy game that will have kids scrambling and laughing together. To keep things from getting too crazy with the furniture, you can use items like hula-hoops for kids to stand in, removing one hoop each round.

Tissue Box Skating

This outdoor-turned-indoor activity is borrowed from occupational therapy games, but it can also be great for indoor recess fun. It’s particularly appropriate when snow and ice are on the ground! Have parents collect old tissue boxes for your classroom. You can let your students choose their boxes and decorate these “skates” with stickers, markers, construction paper or whatever suits their fancy. Then let them “skate” around the classroom, perhaps incorporating games like Red Light, Green Light to work on listening and motor-planning skills.

Balloon Volleyball

Simply blow up some balloons, pass them out to your students, and let the “volleyball” game begin. This activity can be more of a free-for-all if your students can handle it, or you can create two teams for an organized back-and-forth game. For a twist, let the student who hits the balloon call out the name of another student, who must hit the balloon next.

Human Knot

Your students will love getting themselves out of a tangle in this fun game. Have kids stand in a tight circle and thrust their hands into the middle. They must grab a classmate’s hand in each of their own hands. They will then be knotted together in a human chain.

The goal is to unravel the chain by sliding over and under their classmates’ linked hands until they form a smooth circle. To make this game less challenging, you can have your class create two or three separate circles instead of one huge one.

Yoga

Yoga is a form of exercise that involves stretching, mindfulness, and breathing techniques through a variety of yoga poses. The combination of physical movement and mindfulness helps students refocus their attention and promotes academic readiness.

Ask your students to find an open area on the floor and guide them through various yoga poses. There are tons of kid’s yoga tutorials online that you can follow to make the process even easier.

Yoga is an excellent activity for children of all ages and is easy to do in a classroom. You can adapt the length of the session and the difficulty of the poses to your students’ ages and abilities.

Classic Movement-Oriented Games

These can include boxed games and schoolhouse staples, from Simon Says and Duck, Duck, Goose for younger students to Four Corners for older ones.