Children left to their own devices can be a scary thing, and there is no time scarier than when they are forced to stay inside for recess.  As a mom of three I was most wary when my boys were all together and things got a little too quiet because that meant they were up to something, which translated means, they were getting creative.  Multiply that by a lot and now imagine a classroom or grade level full of kids getting “creative”.  Makes you want to be a teacher doesn’t it?

As a music teacher, I’m all for positive creativity and I’ll admit I sometimes let kids continue to do things that might be crossing the line just a little bit because I find it so creative and quite frankly, they’re having fun.  As long as they’re being safe that is.  After all, sometimes that line is pretty fine.  But yesterday during another rainy indoor recess, the kids surprised me with some fun and funny ways to keep themselves occupied.

At lunch recess I take @45 1st graders into my classroom and set up 4 different stations.  At first I was doing six stations with elaborate instructions, but the kids ended up doing pretty much what they wanted anyway.  What I have for them now consists of white  paper and colored pencils, white boards and markers, a game of bingo and, colored popsicle sticks.  Yes, simple colored popsicle sticks have taken over my room to the point I think I’ll just go buy some more.  I normally use them to have kids create rhythm patterns, which was my original intention for this station, but they have turned it into something much more fun.

The kids are collaborating and building houses with different rooms, spelling out the alphabet, writing their names, and whatever else pops into their heads.  They walk in, dump out the sticks all over their portion of the floor and start creating.  I don’t have to supervise, I don’t direct them in any certain way, they just get together, talk about it and help each other make stuff.  It’s awesome!  And despite the “mess”, at the end, I ask them to count sticks into groups of 12 to put back into their individual bags and they help each other put things away.  They’re laughing, they’re excitedly asking me to “come see!” and I don’t have to stress out over kids not following my rules or instructions.

After 1st grade is 4th grade who of course are a lot better as self regulating – well, most of the time.  Sometimes these kids are like bulls in a china shop, their bodies getting bigger but still playing like little kids.  So imagine my face when I walked into one classroom to supervise and I came upon this sight.  A small group of girls was lined up with their backs to the white board singing a mash up of sorts of two different songs.  Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye and Amazing Grace.  Yes, that’s what I thought too but it actually works.  They did have to fake a few of the words of Amazing Grace that they didn’t know but it didn’t stop them.   At some point the boys and some other girls would start this clapping thing and start walking around the room, which turned into a conga line, which picked up the girls at the front until they walked all the way around the room and the whole cycle would begin again with some modifications.  This was improvisation after all.

Yes, the singing got a little loud at times and several times the other teacher supervisors looked at my room with questioning eyebrow raises but I let them go.  I mean, how much more creative could they get?  This lasted for the entirety of the indoor recess, which granted isn’t very long, but when was the last time you saw a child so engaged in something that wasn’t staring at a screen?  They used nothing else in the room, just their bodies, their voices and their imaginations and it was hysterical.  They were smiling and laughing despite the fact that they were stuck inside again and again, I did not need to do anything but observe.

So often, in teaching and life in general, we as adults try to structure everything.  We give them every piece of equipment they need, provide all these rules and information, provide what we perceive is the perfect environment and practically do the activity for them.  Ok, sometimes we actually DO the activity for them, when what the kids really need is nothing but their imaginations and a positive environment to use them.  Let them figure out how to organize, collaborate, improvise and allow them to feel the accomplishment of doing it themselves.  The teacher or adult then becomes the facilitator, guiding, helping them tweak things or challenging them to think of something a new way.  In this way we help the child learn to love LEARNING, not just doing what they’ve been told to do.

I’m grateful to the teachers I remember in elementary school who put up with our creative shenanigans and allowed us to do things outside the box that when I think about it, were sometimes REALLY weird.   But that creativity cultivated a love of learning that has never left and it’s what I hope to do for my kids as well.  Just leave them alone.