Happy Classroom Management Monday everyone! Today we are talking about our after lunch and recess routines! Do you have a set thing you do? I am going to make this short and sweet and tell you about my routines and why they reset us all and prepared us for the rest of the day.

After Lunch and Recess Routines

While you would think lunch and recess would wear kiddos out, it usually does just the opposite. They’re wound up and want to keep playing. Can you blame them? The fact of the matter for us was that we needed to get back to our day and the wildness that recess and lunch brought, kind of eliminated our productivity. I knew we needed a change.

I began thinking about what I should do when we returned to the classroom. My first thought was energy burning brain breaks. Spoiler alert: it made things worse. Instead of burning off the rest of their energy, it was just making my kiddos want to keep jumping around and having fun.

I needed something that would calm them instead.

Lights OFF

I figured, what is more calming than turning off the lights but leaving on just a couple lamps?? We came in, would turn off the lights and just try to relax. No talking (although I wasn’t strict about that) and low lighting seemed to be what we needed. Instead, this creating giggling fits and right when the lights turned on, immense loads of conversation ensued. Everyone wanted to talk about what everyone was giggling about. I will admit…. it was hilarious, but it was not what we needed.

Behold the power of music!

I have mentioned many times before that music is powerful!!! When you think of how it impacts your own life, I think you might agree. I decided we needed to add some music to our lights off time. After trial and error, I found the perfect station on Pandora for us – (Instrumental) Radio – which plays all of today’s hits and other popular songs but as an instrumental version. The songs are sometimes upbeat but with them being just instrumental, they are also extremely calming!

Listening to this station for 5-7 minutes with the main lights off and just lamp lighting was EXACTLY what we needed. Some students chose to lay their heads down, others chose to look at a book, whatever they did was completely up to them. They just had to sit in their seats.

After this “cooling off” time, we were all recharged and ready to finish our day. It was probably my favorite part of the day simply because it was so powerful!!!

I urge you to try something like this for your class, you might be surprised by how well it works!!!!

Now tell me, what do you do in your classroom to calm your kiddos down?! Let’s share and learn from one another!

 

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