Jen, a K-12 autism teacher, shares six indoor recess activities for winter: a blue water sensory bin with penguin figurines, Core Language Boards for turn-taking during water play, a taped racetrack for movement and tracing, a sticky-note scavenger hunt with letters and sight words, a pretend kitchen for structured role-play, and familiar sensory materials like Play-Doh and kinetic sand.
I don't know how, but I blinked and it's the middle of January already. We are knee-deep in all of our winter units, and I want to share some of my fun setups in my classroom that you can easily replicate in yours. Let me show you. I'm Jen, and I am a K-12 self-contained autism teacher, and I have a love-hate relationship with winter, mainly because of indoor recess. Keeping things fresh and new in a self-contained environment can be really tricky, especially when it comes to things like indoor recess. My class is used to leaving my classroom and going outside and having a separate place to play, and that is really hard when all of a sudden the weather is just not cooperating for us to be able to do that. We do have a sensory room. We utilize that often, but I really like to use that as a regulation space, not just a play space. Um, it can be utilized for both, but I really want students to use it to help them learn regulation, and we use it before learning all of the time. So students are getting access to that quite a bit. So it comes down to having special things in the classroom that we have available so they can have something special to do during indoor recess. It's tricky, but we've got some really fun things for January and February to keep things fresh. I wanted to share them with you. I love this sensory bin. I got it from Joni Kraft. Several years ago, but it is huge and it is child size. I love that it is see-through and it is so fun to fill with different things. In January, I love to fill it with these pretend ice cubes. I got these on Amazon and a million different little penguins and styrofoam blocks to act like icebergs. Now you can play with this just like this, but to up the ante On those indoor recess days, we fill this with water, we add a couple drops of blue liquid watercolor, and it looks like the ocean, and the kids have a blast. Whenever working in a group like this, you're always going to have the opportunity to work on social skills. That's what we do outside at recess too, we work on social skills, and so we do have some social language. Core Language Boards up here, and I love this because it's talking about turn-taking. My turn, your turn, more, I'm finished, or I want. This is such functional language for kids, especially when they're working with a highly desirable item like Water Play. Another fun activity is just to take whatever table you have and add a little bit of tape. This is dry erase board or whiteboard marker tape. It sticks down really easy, peels up really easy, and we We have no problem with it leaving residue. You could use electrical tape. You could use a dry erase marker, whatever you would like, but use something to create a racetrack or a parade path. We are going to have our penguins go on a parade. So we're gonna have students march them up and line them up all the way around the line. And it is so fun to watch the students work together to create this little path. If students need some gross motor movement or fine motor practice, we just have them practice running their finger all the way across and follow the line. We use cars. We just have a blast with this. If you want to get super creative, put this on your floor and have your students follow the lines. Next up, sticky note scavenger hunt. All you do is write the letter, the sight word, draw a dot with the color, shape, whatever students are learning. And if they're matching, make an identical one, have students find it and put the match together. Or if you've got receptive ID, have them wander around till they find it and bring it back to you. Or if it's expressive, have them wander the room till they find the sticky note and then call it out to you. This is so adaptable, it can be used for any subject, anything, any topic. And it's so engaging. Students love it. In fact, they'll be running around your classroom if you don't put parameters in place quickly. So here's an example of what this would look like if the student was matching. I've got lowercase c, and they would wander around the classroom till they found the match. Here I'm doing uppercase to lowercase. You could do identical matching. They just stick it together, they wander the classroom, until they find all of the matches. It's a great way to get some gross motor in and skill practice at the same time. Because we are expected to get a lot of yucky weather over the next week, I did sneak in our kitchen and some pretend play items. I don't normally have these in my classroom, but it's gonna be a little rough over the next few days, So I've got this area and I have it sectioned off by my independent work zone. So this is closed. The center is not available for students unless I open it during recess time. As usual in my classroom, sensory play is on repeat, especially during indoor recess and when we can't get outside. Play-Doh, kinetic sand, Theraputty, All of those things are standard in my classroom and we use them very frequently. Additionally, we love art activities and I always have art activities set out if students would rather do that than pick a center and play during indoor recess. I am so curious how you guys tackle indoor recess and the yucky weather. Let me know in the comments if you have fresh ideas, if you have something fun that you do with your students, I would love to know. I always learn so much from you.
