Play Makes Us Human is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Peter Gray Selfie in Singapore
Friends, in Letter #37, I wrote about the bizarre rules that some schools today place on what elementary school children are allowed or not allowed to do at recess. There were many very interesting comments.
Now, with this thread, I hope to continue that discussion by inviting you to write something—in the comments section here—about your own memories of elementary school recess. It would be helpful if you include (a) the year, or at least the decade, you are talking about; (b) your memory of how much time you had for recess (including the lunch period if that provided opportunity for outdoor play); (c) something about what you recall doing; and (d) maybe something about the role of teachers or other adults in supervising recess or lunch hour.
I’ll start off with some memories of my own, about recess in small-town elementary schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin I attended in the 1950s.
I remember lunch hour more than recess. In all the schools I attended lunch was a whole hour of freedom. Some kids went home (WALKED or BIKED BY THEMSELVES) for lunch, but most of us stayed at school, ate the lunch we brought from home in 5 minutes, and spent the rest of the time playing either on the school grounds or a nearby field or woods. No adults monitored us during lunch hour.
I remember in third grade we boys spent much of our time wrestling on what I recall to be a rather steep hill on a lot near the school. The object was for one of us—or sometimes several of us-- to try to push or pull another down the hill while the other resisted. It usually ended as a rolling tussle on the ground. It was a grassy hill in fall and spring; a snowy hill in winter..
I also remember games with pocket knives, throwing them at makeshift targets or playing games a bit like horseshoes but with knives. It seemed that all boys carried them in those days. In later grades—especially 5th and 6th—we would often get up a self-directed game of softball, which usually included girls as well as boys.
At one school, when I was in fourth grade, there was a steep long hill behind the school that ended on a skating rink at the bottom. We would ice a path on the hill down to the rink, with buckets of water, and skate down it—on actual skates for those who had them. Some went down standing up on a flexible flyer sled. I never dared to do that, but really admired those who did. And, of course, snowball fights were rather common in winter at every school I attended.
I don’t know if this was true in all the schools I attended (we moved a lot), but in 5th and 6th grade we had two half-hour recesses each day—one in the morning and one in the afternoon—in addition to the lunch hour. I recall recesses as generally more tame than lunch; maybe a teacher was out there keeping some sort of eye on us (but truly not a very close one). I remember more mixed-sex play at recesses than at lunch. Jacks and jump rope were big games for both boys and girls. We also played self-directed games of softball and basketball, often involving both boys and girls. In very cold weather we would play in the gym—often self-directed dodgeball or half-court basketball at both ends of the gym.
I don’t remember anyone ever getting seriously hurt.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, famously, “I pay the schoolmaster, but it is the school boys who educate my son.” I definitely learned far more that has contributed to my character from my schoolmates—at recess, lunch, and after-school play—than I did from teachers in the classroom.
Perhaps , with your comments, we can chart how school recesses and lunch hours changed over the decades from the 1950s to now. And maybe make some international comparisons too.
Not my story, but my now 14 yr old son's. While still in public school, 4th grade my son like mist boys his age had TONS of energy. They were only given a 30 minute recess once a day, on a playground but with no "toys"...so the boys started bringing their own basketballs or footballs from home. But after a day or two were told that wasn't allowed because they were "being too rough". So they improvised, as boys often do and began tossing, kicking and running after a single serve water bottle. This was also very soon removed as an option of something to play with. Made no sense to this mother of four. Eventually we pulled our children out of the public school system, and he enjoys his days of freedom to be all boy, all day. So thankful for this option!!!
1968 I was ten years old and lived in a small college town called California, Pennsylvania. I attended the college lab school. What I remember most was playing kickball at lunch and maybe recess. I was a tomboy and loved kickball. I recall boys and girls both played. 1969 I attended the same school. I was fortunate to walk to school. After school we played pick-up football in the street, mostly boys, but i remember playing often. I was a paper girl, so I had to deliver my papers usually before I played. At the age of ten and eleven I walked downtown on my own, picked up the papers, delivered them and then joined neighborhood kids to play. I loved the freedom of playing outside and I'm striving to find ways to give children that freedom to play.
Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1970s our main school playground was a slope of rough tarmac with a flat, smooth area at the front of the Victorian building reserved for infants ( under 8s). There were various boiler rooms and outbuildings with narrow spaces where children loved to squeeze in for games of hide and seek, or bullying and extortion of dinner money. Fights were fairly common and children would stand in a circle, chanting “fight” until the janny appeared in his brown dust jacket to break it up.
In winter we made slides down the rough hill and if you slipped, the tarmac would rip your flesh so there would be another visit to the janny for some yellow cream and a plaster. There were also games of British Bulldog where long lines of over 50 players faced each other off and the object was to batter through each others’ line. This game was never banned in our school. Skipping was another popular game for girls but some boys too. Generally there would be two queues of players to “jump in” from either end to rhymes like
Granny’s in the kitchen doin some stitchin
In comes the bogeyman and out goes SHE!
At this point the cawers would whip up the pace of the ropes and shout
Salt, mustard, vinegar, PEPPER!
Whoever survived this was then Granny.
There was much less time for play at lunch than break, as our school dinners were served in sittings and if you were at second sitting much of the first half of lunch was spent in a queue.
In my rural North Georgia elementary school in the late 1990s, normally we would have a 25-30min recess where, if we had behaved well and completed assignments, we were allowed to play on our small but functional playground. Teachers would usually not hover over us, but most games consisted of tag, Four Square, or swinging.
When I was in 5th grade, my school installed a new, shiny metal slide. One day after school, while my mom had a meeting with a teacher, my brothers and I were allowed to play on the playground unsupervised. A few minutes into playtime, the assistant principal came out to the playground carrying a box of wax paper from the cafeteria. He asked us how we liked the new playground equipment and if the slide was fast. Then, he ripped off four rectangular sheets of wax paper and handed three of them to my brothers and me. He took the fourth sheet and began climbing the steps to the top of the new slide. He then told us to watch as he placed the wax paper onto the slide, sat down, and zoomed down the slide in a blur. With his tie flapping over his shoulder in the breeze, he zipped off the end of the slide hitting the ground below with a loud thump. His dress pants were covered in wood chips as he stood up and turned to give us a wink and a smile. We giggled excitedly at the sight before we raced each other to the top of the slide to follow suit. That afternoon, we took turn after turn using our wax paper sleds on the hot slick tin. I'll never forget the look of disbelief on my classmates' faces the next day when I told them what we were allowed to do! It's one of my best childhood memories.
Great idea! Love the previous memories - this really clicks.
I went to primary school (6-10) in north west London in the mid 1960s, and I remember three breaks - two of about 20 minute morning and afternoon and a I hour lunch break. In that lunch time, more or less the whole school used to trek out of the gates and in a long gaggle down the street, over the road and into a green space called 'the Burial Ground', because that's what it was. It dated back at least to the early nineteenth century, probably before, and it had lawns and flowers and bushes and a tangle of plants over the variously maintained graves. There were no teachers or anything with us - it was entirely self-organized with the older kids spontaneously at the head of the line - and they used to round everyone up in time to get back, I don't remember any issues of being late etc etc (as Molesworth if anyone knows that cartoon by R Searle would say) - there was a little playground too, but we generally chased each other everywhere else. There was never any problem that I remember about respecting the monuments or the place generally and if it had been my grave we were dancing by (not on as far as I recall) I'd have been happy to see kids alive and kicking. I don't mean to sound like Wordsworth filling his childhood with retrospective meaning (yes I used to teach English) but I do definitely at times know I had a sense of life and what I'd call 'something else' from a kid's perspective blended together into a whole, though I don't suppose I'd have expressed it quite that way.
Look forward to seeing more of other people's stories - best to everyone from cloudy London, George
Dear Prof Gray, I think your thesis is excellent. I remember we were basically free to do anything we wanted during recess and lunch break. I remember even sometimes I would go home to eat lunch. One thing I want to say is because there was no supervision basically, sometimes I would get bullied as I was the only Asian looking kid in my class. But would I want to change into the prisons we have today at school because of that? No. Freedom to play is best.
My fondest memories of elementary school are of recess. This was in the 1990s in an international school in S E Asia. I don't remember exactly, but morning break was probably 20 minutes and lunch recess 45 minutes. During lunch we had a choice of going to the library, to the outdoor playground, or to the computer lab where we could play games on the PCs. The outdoor space included a covered play area (this was in the tropics so lots of sun and/or rain) with lots of equipment like jump ropes, balls, hopscotch and four square. Then there was a huge field with a playground at either end with swings, slides, jungle gym and so on. There was a soccer/football pitch, a basketball court, and tetherball. We were supervised by school support staff who also supervised in the cafeteria and the school buses. It was rare to interact with these support staff - they certainly didn't intervene in our play. My perception was that their main job was to blow a whistle when it was time to go back inside. Teachers were only seen coming to get their lunch in the cafeteria and would then disappear.
Now as an adult, I work in the same type of school myself, and have never worked in a school with so many facilities and options at recess, as I had when I was a student! Moreover, teachers are now required to be in the cafeteria to supervise students during lunch, and outside on the playground to monitor students during recess. School support staff are not used for supervision as it is felt they will be too permissive, not monitor properly and not enforce the rules, or these support staff positions have been eliminated altogether. I've sat in many faculty meetings where teachers were lectured that during playground duty, they must not look at their phones, must actively supervise students at all times, and enforce rules and consequences. Teachers complain that recess just causes problems because the students are bullying each other while away from direct supervision. Or that the students don't like recess and don't want to go. All these recess and lunch duties are a burden on the teachers, who may not get a break during the school day or be able to eat lunch in peace. Note that this is not in a stretched public school, but private schools charging hefty tuition.
I'm a school librarian and have always been required to be on duty for students who want to come to the library during break times. When I was a kid, the library was always a quiet place to retreat at recess, with just a few kids there to check out a new book in between class visits -- everyone else was outdoors. Nowadays, we always have issues with overcrowding, as hordes of kids flock there to sit in the air conditioning/heating and avoid being outside. Only a couple are there to actually read. I assume they spend most of their time indoors and don't like being outside, and have given up trying to play out there since the supervision by teachers is so onerous.
The other big difference is the computer games. I enjoyed playing SimCity, Oregon Trail, KidPix and such in the school computer lab at recess. I guess in those days, it was considered beneficial for children to learn how to use computers, so as students in a wealthy private school, this was provided for us. But I don't remember any addictive behaviour, fighting over computers, kids refusing to stop playing to go back to class etc. Sadly this is how kids are with games and devices now. I can't even offer educational games on the library iPads/laptops because it causes so much disruptive behaviour. I don't think it's the games themselves, but (as Peter has talked about), computer/video games represent the only remaining opportunity these children have for free play, and they are desperate for it. It's very sad, and I really feel for the kids.
I love this thread. My 1970s elementary school had 30 minutes of recess in the morning and an hour at lunch — plenty of time to walk home for lunch or to go out and play four-square or kickball, walk around the massive perimeter practicing swear words w your best friend, and climb and/or play in the massive evergreens. There may have been another short recess in the afternoon. Oh - we also had a jungle gym, teeter totters (ask your best friend to give you bumps), swings you could jump out of, slides, and a carousel with horizontal bars you could use to hang upside down by your knees while the carousel was spinning.
I taught environmental education at a public elementary school from 2011-2022 and was sad by how much recess had changed. K-2 had two 20-minute recesses but the older kids only had the one at lunchtime. You couldn’t go until a specific time, at which point the teacher would escort the class clear across the building to the playground bc during a renovation the moved the playground away from the cafeteria. If it looked gray or was drizzling, many teachers wouldn’t go out. Some wouldn’t go out if it was snowing - but many others delighted in the snow. There was one small slide, swings and a thing with stairs that you could “climb.” There was also a field for the older kids and basketball hoops.
My daughter attended Lake George Elementary in Lake George, NY, it was a rural community an hour north of Albany, NY. Recess, even in the snowy winter was held outside in a grass area on the edge of the woods for 30 minutes each day. The children were allowed to dig in the snow, play with the leaves, and sometimes even play in the mud. The principal of the school had been a physical education teacher and emphasized the importance of physical activity. The school had physical education every day, and frequently outside even in less than perfect days. Physical education included rougher activities like wrestling. This was recent, 2016-2020. Before and after school there were frequently children found at the local church, not because they had found religion, but the church was by the bus stop and allowed the children to play, and play they did. Even some of the jr high/high students would play. We now live close to nyc and my 15 year old talks about her childhood experiences in a way her peers do not grasp as she had the freedom to play and build.
Your last post about the restrictions placed on kids now really resonated. I had just FaceTimed with my 7-year-old granddaughter who goes to a public school in Los Angeles. I was shocked to learn that tag and all chasing games were verboten. Apparently kids had fallen on the asphalt and scraped their knees. Not sure if this rule came from the school or originated with parents who found a scraped knee unacceptable. There's no climbing equipment on this piece of asphalt and balls are also not available. I think there is a tetherball set up. My daughter, as a parent volunteer, organized the school's field day. Last year they had a 50 yard dash but that was nixed this year as again, parents complained because kids fell. These injuries were minor—scrapes. This year, field day will involve less movement.
My granddaughter's recess contrasts sharply with mine from the 1960s. We had a 30 minute recess in the morning and an hour including lunch. I don't remember any adult supervision though someone may have been keeping an eye on us. There were swings and maybe a slide. Girls and boys mostly played separately. I recall doing a lot of jump rope, Chinese jump rope, and hand clapping games. We also had PE at least 3 times/week. In general the school day allowed time for much more movement, and unsupervised movement than today's recess
I went to primary school in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1960s. Recess was 20 or 30 minutes, and lunch time around an hour. We did a lot of running around and chasing each other, and played a lot of football, cricket or rugby. A pair of teachers walked around “supervising”, but there had to be a really serious problem for them to intervene. Indeed, I have no memories of incidents requiring teacher intervention. Lunch was brown bag, and we ate our sandwiches in the playground.
Secondary/high school was in Lusaka, Zambia in the 1970s. Recess was 30 min and lunch 90 min. Some of us went home, others to have lunch at the nearby student hostel and the rest ate their sandwiches. There was no teacher supervision. We either walked around in groups of friends (this was adolescence, so we tried to look cool!) or played a game of football, basketball or tennis. I was a basketball freak and we always played a game after lunch before returning to classes.
In short, we were free to just be children, with teachers doing token supervision, or without any supervision at all.
Peter, you might recall I emailed you almost years ago (2014 fall) when my children's elementary school in Central Florida took away recess completely. This topic is so close to my heart, and painful to recall as it unfortunately began a long journey of challenge (not to mention grief, anger, etc) as a parent.
In previous years, the students had been allowed outside to the supervised playground area that contained a small metal jungle gym and a bunch of fields. If they finished their lunch, they were allowed to raise their hands and be let outside. My son, 9 years old, was one of the many kids who ate as fast at they could so that their free time could be spent out doors in freedom. He would usually participate in a group of kids who would create teams and various informal games like kickball, tag, and others I can't remember the names of.
The decision to "take away recess" in the fall of 2014 or spring 2015 happened at the school level, not county-wide, as far as I'm aware. The principal rebuffed our outcry and said it wasn't "gone" it was just rescheduled, and children had to stay in the cafeteria for the entire allotted lunch time (which I believe had been shortened to allow for more classroom time... coincidentally this was the year the FSA, a new statewide assessment system that linked teacher raises to student performance...) was to allow individual teachers to designate time for recess according to their schedules. So it seems it was 1. to give teachers an opportunity to provide MORE structured instruction aka test prep. But really, it was a staffing problem. Upon a lot of further push back from my self and, sadly, just a couple of other parents, I learned that there had been a couple of broken bones, etc, and the school supposedly was unable to hire additional staff to "properly supervise for safety." And they "couldn't ask teachers to give up their lunchtime" to do so...
This was absolutely devastating for my son and for our family. His teacher was one of the ones who wanted more time for test prep. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS A GIFTED CLASS and the students were surely already going to achieve high scores. She rarely let them outside... EVEN THOUGH IT WAS FLORIDA and sunny nearly every day. My son came home crying most days. Sometimes she would turn on YouTube and allow them some time to move around with recordings of the video game "Just Dance," but the pop music and cheesy videos did not appeal to my son, so he would just sit and become depressed about his life in that tiny classroom all day. Additionally, when he did have a break from the classroom, he had to sit in a sterile cafeteria for 30 minutes, when the sun was outside shining and he desperately needed to move and play!
He's now 18 by the way, graduated last year, and going to college next fall. I can honestly say that was the beginning of a severe decline in his educational experience. We tried many other types of learning environments after (a year of homeschool included) but he desperately wanted to be with his peers and friends, so he ended up trudging his way through that horrendous system. We finally were able to move out of the state a year and a half ago, getting my youngest child started in High School in Colorado where down the street, I enjoy seeing the elementary kids roam freely outdoors every day for what seems like long periods of time... shockingly, very lightly supervised! They're even allowed to use all the fields and open space (and it's a huge property). Florida school had these ridiculous boundaries, some fields were "too far," etc.
I hope that helps you with a more recent timeline. I can't remember recess too much in my life other than the comparison that playground equipment was much more basic, aka DANGEROUS, and I did enjoy the endless rows of swings, and the games we would make up in the fields.
My elementary school in suburban Maryland in the mid-1970s was pretty similar to how you describe 1950s Minnesota. I have especially fond memories of tag (which sometimes involved falling) and tetherball (which sometimes involved getting whacked in the face).
I remember a stern music teacher, Mrs. Jackson, who had an accent that made her hard to understand. When she angrily said "this is a treble clef" I thought she was saying "this is a trouble class." I also remember that at the top left corner of the board were the letters UATW, where the names of miscreants would be written - indicating they had to stand Up Against The Wall during recess. Mrs. Jackson was a sadistic tyrant who somehow managed to make music (which I have always loved very intensely) boring. This is the personality type that gives us the new playground rules.
I can also offer a control experiment - my brother is 13 years younger than me and by the time he was going to the same elementary school in the late 80s, the recess rules were a lot closer to UATW than they were to actual play.
My interest in biology began in the woods behind our house. My brother never played in the woods. Same parents, same neighborhood, but something happened between 1975 and 1988 that suddenly made everybody think playing in the woods is how you end up on a milk carton. The faulty risk-perception deprived my brother of experiences I found incredibly valuable.
I grew up in northern Utah in the 1980s and early 90s, and have a few specific memories of recess. One of my fondest memories is swinging on very long chained swings. There was a large dome shaped structure that felt 20 feet high and had about 5 or 6 swings on in. At one point in time there was an inflated ball hanging in the center and we tried to kick it at the peak of the swing. When the ball was no longer there we tried to stretch and kick the chain that was prob a foot long or so. We went high enough that we would get slack in the chain and would have a few second of free fall before the chains caught us again. I loved it! This structure was also regularly climbed on and I don't recall getting in trouble for it. We also had these odd swings we called gliders that were pumped by hand while you sat inside a frame over a seat. I remember at least 1 or 2 kids got hit in the head with these because they wandered too close to them. They were eventually removed a few years after I moved into Jr high. I also remember swinging bars. They were simple bars of varying heights that we would hook one knee over and then spin around them head over heels. Inevitably one year we would be too tall and would hit our heads in the dirt beneath them. I also remember lots of football, kickball, red rover, building snowmen, tag, and other field games. There was lots of open space and kids often wandered very far from the playground, but I don't recall anyone getting in trouble for it. Snowballs were a bit touch and go as we got older. I remember one kid getting in trouble for throwing one at me and hitting me in the face. I tackled him afterward and the recess monitor lady got mad at me. But when I told her about the snowball she hauled him off instead. But generally speaking snowball fights were pretty regualr and accepted. I don't recall there being more than 2 recess ladies. And I often remember teachers being out in the morning and afternoon recesses and 2 non teachers out at lunch. One teacher used a large handbell to bring us in and another one could whistle so loud the whole playground could hear her. We had tall metal slides, teeter totters, and I do recall a smaller plastic structure for the younger kids on one side of the school. Great memories.
Elementary school in the latter half of the 1980s is Southern California. I remember there was always an adult or two around, whom I knew I could go to if I got hurt. Definitely closed campuses, though sneaking out through gates was not impossible if one wanted to—then again, I don’t recall having much desire to escape recess!
We had ball games available (four square, tether ball, wall ball with walls erected specifically for the purpose), high slides, swings, vertical climbing bars and monkey bars, balance beams, and gymnast bars. I remember in kindergarten trikes and a track for trike races, and in third grade I remember a merry go round. I went to 4 different elementary schools from k to 6th.
Sometimes we would set up co-ed softball games in the later years. There was a lot of walking around with other girls on what seem in my memory to be vast campuses compared to what my kids have here at our local elementary schools in western Washington state, the creation and recitation of rhyming and clapping games, jumping rope with increasing complexity, demonstrations of gymnastics on the parallel bars, and not a small amount of exclusionary practices, establishing in and out groups of girls. Quite a bit of showing off of physical skills and flirting with boys.
There seemed plenty of time to play one thing and then another and another, though never as much time as we all would have liked.
My first elementary school was in New Mexico circa 1992-95, but I can’t remember how long we had for recess. We had dirt playground, occasionally some grass on a lower “field,” typical playground equipment and a ton of large swings. Boys played football on the “field” mostly, or tag. Girls swung and talked. Occasionally we wrote in the dirt.
Moved to Maryland in 1996, the first school I was at was lame— no swings, were not allowed to do the monkey bars, big field area and blacktop. I think there was limited basketballs that everyone fought over, not many other balls I can remember.
For 4th and 5th grade, moved to different school and recess was great. Circa 1997-1999. We had a big field, blacktop, two basketball courts, and playground equipment. Still no swings. Boys played a big game of soccer in the field and basketball. I got tired of the boys not letting me play basketball, so we started our own girls only game on the next court. Super fun. Occasionally we played four-square, and invented our own version of it, and jumped a lot of rope. Probably got about 45 min to an hour. It was the best.
I attended three primary schools, in rural and urban areas. I will describe the most rural and the urban one, since they were the most different.
My best memories were from them most rural area:
a) 1991 - 1993 living in Tyrol, Austria. It is a mountainous area and most people there were either farmers, craftsmen or working in tourism.
b) School was from morning to noon. Lunch was at home and afternoon was off. All mothers were stay-at-home mothers. The concept of daycare did not exist in this area. Recess was therefore 5-15 minute breaks between classes. My school was tiny (about 40 kids in the whole school). All kids played on a paved place in front of the school. When recess ended, the headmaster came to the door and rang a cowbell. All kids commuted to and from school on foot, except some kids who lived high up on the mountain, who used a special school bus to commute.
c) At recess, boys were almost exclusively fighting for fun. Girls were playing skipping games (gummitwist) and exchanging stickers. I was a tomboy and participated in both boy's and girl's activities. Since all kids mixed at recess (ages 6-10 years), I also remember the older girls being nice to me and including me in their games. Although there was a lot of physical fighting, I do not remember any bullying and generally, aggression levels were very low. I remember this as a time of fun and peace. In the afternoons, there was no school.
d) I do not remember any supervision at recess and also no supervision when playing after school.
My memories from the urban are were a bit different:
a) 1994 - 1995 living in Vienna, capital city of Austria.
b) School was from morning to noon. Lunch at home, afternoons off.
c) Recess was mostly spent in the classroom. It was very loud and chaotic. There was a children's home nearby and many children from there were in our class. Many of them were sad and lonely and therefore loud and disorganized. I spent most of recess sitting at my desk, sticking the fingers in my ears and reading. Kids were exchanging pornographic images and cigarettes (8-10 years old). They did not really play. I did not feel comfortable.
d) I do not remember any supervision. Parents and Teachers in Vienna at 1995 were much more concerned with safety, though. For example, my mother let my little sister (5 years old) walk to the kindergarten on her own (it was just down the street), but the kindergarten teachers did not allow for this. Before, in Tyrol, this was possible.
1980s at an international school in West Africa under the auspices of the US Embassy -- I believe we had about 45 minutes to eat our lunch and then play outdoors. Minimal supervision, but we did stay on the school campus. Minimal playground equipment, too! There were tetherball courts, one set of swings, and a decommissioned VW bus for us to play on. The doors had been removed and the fluids drained, but it was otherwise intact. All on dirt/sand by the way. No rubber mulch or cushioned mats. Note that although there was a nurse on staff, there was no American-style ER nearby nor ambulance service of a functional type in the city! Still, we had no real restrictions on our play.
I remember no specific rules about what we could and could not do, other than teachers stepping in if there were serious fights, but I don't remember any truly serious fighting anyway.
Short morning recess , long lunch/recess then another short afternoon recess from 1st grade to 4th. We lost some minutes off the morning and afternoon recess time in 5th and 6th grade, but still had the long lunch/recess.
There was always a teacher outside with us but we had free roam of the whole school yard and black top. I used to get scolded for playing the Brook and the woods.
There was Old metal playground equipment and then they built these weird tire structures for us to play in. Plenty of injuries happened in the tires but I don’t remember a big deal being made it.
My son’s recess experience was way shorter and he was miserable. He has autism and is very bright. Standard issue elementary school was a disaster. Pulled him and my daughter out at the end of second grade. Best Decision Ever!
The kiddos never got in trouble for playing in the brook and the woods. : )
1990 The International School in a small island in the Philippines. We had a field with lots of trees, we had no yard duty teachers, just a security guard at the gate. We were unsupervised but managed to be on class on time,stay safe, and have the best time. We played around the trees. In our culture, we love these jumping spiders, we would collect them and let them fight. One classmate had a hurt jumping spider. We had no idea spiders laid eggs in an eggsac. We just thought she was pregnant. So we "tried" to save her baby, and operated on her with the sharp point of a compass. We had so much freedom, nothing bad happened. Now im a teacher in a public school in Australia. During yard duty, im expected to actively supervise. I cant help to think that we have dug such a deep hole of generations who cant take risks, that children these days dont know what to do with themselves with "free time" any more. Free time is equated to screen time. Not explore time, talk time, game time.... under my watch the grade 7-8 students rough play. They wrestle and chase each other. Other teachers say no to this. Before I stop anyone from rough playing I observe those playing look at their eyes and smiles. Most of the time they control when they see their mates are starting to be uncomfortable, and i don't intervene.... this is my little form of promoting play.... and actively advocating play
I’m a child of the 80’s. I started half day kindergarten in 89. In elementary school we had 2 recesses plus lunch/recess. I don’t remember how long each were. There were teachers outside but I don’t ever remember interacting with them. We would run to the edge of a field and play tag. My little one is supposed to start all day kindergarten next year. They get one 20 minute recess a day. Lunch is 30 minutes. A few schools advertise that kids get one 30 minute recess like it’s an amazing feat. My little one has free play almost all day long right now. She is supposed to go to a full day of kindergarten and get a 20-30 minute recess? Yikes. No thanks. We are looking at homeschooling options. I wish there was a Sudbury style school in Anchorage, AK.
I have just organised an online course on 'Children's Play and Folklore'. The first four sessions were run by Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, who are experts in this field (every folk song now has a 'Roud number' as Steve has collected and catalogued nearly 2,500!). I would love to share the sessions with you, Peter, and with all readers here. I think you'll find them really interesting. Here are the links: Session 1 - https://youtu.be/xcGUOnIo--U. Session 2 - https://youtu.be/XuUzoho-3Us. Session 3 -
I was born in 1956, about 15 miles to the south of London, UK. At that time it was a semi-rural area and I grew up on a smallholding (chickens, fruit, vegetables). I actually remember very little about playtimes (we usually call it 'playtime' in the UK - although, strangely, the school I went to from the age of 7 DID call it 'recess'!). I hated school so much and I never had a single friend until I was nine years old. So I remember walking round the outside of the playground by myself for ever. I think I do remember taking toy cars to school and playing with them there. From nine, I think we did do things like French skipping (with elastic) and skipping with ropes, but I don't recall anything else, I'm afraid. I'm sure our morning playtimes were about 20 minutes and lunchtime was at least an hour. It wasn't uncommon, at my infant school (age 4-7) for children to go home for lunch. However, at home I had immense freedom. The smallholding was quite large so I could roam around, collect warm eggs from under warm hens, climb trees, lie in the grass and look at the sky. We lived near a wood so I would go collecting sticks for beanpoles with my dad - and we would go on long walks across nearby hills where there were pig farms and kennels. I certainly don't remember much 'adult supervision' in playtime, either at home or at school. I am horrified to read that now, in primary schools, that afternoon play has disappeared completely and that lunch time is now around 40 minutes (in which teachers are expected to have their own lunch, supervise lunch, and run lunchtime clubs!). Sorry, my lack of memories of this are not much help to you!
1987-1993 two schools in a remote small town and a middle-sized city, China.
We had 10-minute breaks between 45-min classes morning and afternoon, and 2-hour lunch break when most kids walked home to take lunch and have naps. No teacher supervised at all.
Boys and girls played together in the small town school when I was younger. Chasing, teasing, jumping ropes, games with rules. Boys and girls separated in the city school when I was older. Jumping ropes and chatting are what I remembered.
1987-1989, I was 9 to 10 years old, at a primary school in Cheshire in the UK. There was a one-hour long lunch break and I think a thirty minute break in the morning and afternoon. In the winter, we played on the tarmac playground behind the school. In the summer, we could play on the school field too, which was pretty big, so we were far from adult eyes. Teachers didn't supervise us during breaks, but instead "dinner ladies" (dinner has stuck as the name for the meal in the middle of the day for schools in the UK), who were middle-aged ladies who came in just to supervise us during the breaks.
Boys played tag (called tick in our area) or football. Girls played some game where they jumped over elastic stretched between two pairs of girls legs. I remember some girls from our class role-playing working in McDonald's. There was also skipping (jump-rope). British bulldog (a kind of tag game) was banned in 1989. I remember our teacher coming out and saying we couldn't play it any more. He apologised and said it wasn't his idea, so presumably it came from the local education authority.
There were only two or three dinner ladies to supervise all the children, and I don't remember them being very mobile, so we weren't supervised very strictly. We had to negotiate and argue things out amongst ourselves for the most part.
So my experience comes from the UK in the 1970s and 1980s (all girls convent school). I always walked to school. In the 'primary' part of the school, we had an hour for lunch and 20 minutes for break morning and afternoon. No-one ever supervised, although I do recall that we knew where to go if there were any problems. Wet or dry, we were outside - either in the large green field or in the tarmac playground (very close to the classrooms). I recall a handful of playtimes inside when super-wet (but there wasn't really anywhere to go, other than the classrooms, so pretty dull). Outside, all of our games were self-directed (tag, stuck in the mud, running races, skipping ropes, elastics etc were all hugely popular, as was 'doing gymnastics' eg practising handstands and cartwheels). People would wander off in groups (large and small), and in ones and twos (the latter started to happen as we got older). These breaks were almost always fun (obviously the occasional fall out with friends) and definitely memorable; when asked how school was, my answers typically revolved around what we did during the breaks! Now I am writing this down, I also recall that we spent much of our time around lessons discussing what we would play at the next break and sometimes organising to bring in a particular piece of equipment if needed ready for the next day (eg another rope or ball etc).
Early 1970s in middle school in suburban NJ, we had lunch hour free. We bolted our lunches and then hit the playground, which was a dirt field and a bit of tarmac. The boys played "Kill the man with the ball", which you "won" by getting the ball to the gym at the end of lunch. This required crossing the tarmac bit, where getting tackled was a bit more serious. And, despite there being no point but honor in having the ball before the very end, people still struggled mightily to get it, with the inevitable result that they were brought down long before a chance of winning had appeared. No serious injuries resulted, but plenty of scrapes, etc. And it got a lot of excess energy out of us!
In the 1990s, my kids were in a Montessori elementary school in the very liberal community of Shaker Heights. They had relatively unsupervised time outside - I wrote about how rules evolved in a very Hayekian way (despite the fact that no one at the school would have read any Hayek or, among the teachers, approved of him!) there for the Foundation for Economic Education here: https://fee.org/articles/spontaneous-order-on-the-playground/
I attended a public elementary school near Colorado Springs school years 2002 through 2007.
If I remember correctly, we had two 30-minute recesses a day, and 30 minutes for lunch, indoors. I ate hot lunch, so after waiting in line, I ended up scarfing to try to finish my food in time to go back to class.
My elementary school used to have a small clump of scrub oak trees at the edge of the playground, where ladybugs lived. We were not allowed to enter the trees, because the teachers could not see us there, but we could reach and touch the trees. In front of the patch of trees were some posts dug into the ground, just large enough to hide behind, to the chagrin of some recess monitors. We would capture ladybugs on the oak leaves and put them in sandwich bags with holes poked into them. Kids would store these ladybugs in their backpacks and show them to friends after school. I collected acorns and made them my "children." We would play stick tag, throwing sticks to tag each other. Eventually that game got banned, though I don't remember anybody getting hurt. We kids had rules in place to avoid that. We had this gigantic swing set; it took me a while to build the confidence to take the full swing. We would jump from the seat of the swing and see how far away we could land, drawing a line in the gravel each time. We played troll, where we would run across a wobbly bridge while one kid tried to lightly grab our legs. We had a tire swing; several of us would lay down on it and another kid or two would swin us around as fast as they could. We performed all kinds of stunts on the monkey bars; some kids did fall down and break their arms, so recess monitors started to tell us to only climb on the bottom of the bars. There was a tension between students and recess monitors; sometimes they were okay with these thinfs and sometimes not. This was 1st and 2nd grade.
Then 3rd grade arrived and we were expected to do homework. I was so bad at doing my homework that I had to sit on the bleachers at recess until my work was done. I was always sleep deprived, so it took a long time to finish. I didn't get a whole lot of recess that year. My best friend, who got into the Smart class and was designated as Gifted and Talented, started hanging out with her new friends from GT, and they collectively shunned me. I started to internalize the idea that I was dumb. I developed germaphobia and started putting hand sanitizer all over every surface and all over my hands until they became cracked and bloody. I started having bad stomach aches and felt like I was dying. I hadn't realized until now that all of this started happening in 3rd grade. What an awful year!
Life did get better, though! I will always cherish those early recess memories and that magical place where the trees met the playground. Now they are only a memory; not 3 years after I graduated 5th grade, they chopped down the trees and updated the playground with a rubber mat surface.
In the mid 1960s, we had 90 minutes for lunch and recess. We had to eat the school lunch, but it was pretty good. Recess was outside usually, completely unsupervised. I usually swung on swings, singing. If it rained I think we were in the gym, and in that case teachers were present. This was in Nashville TN.
In 1962-63 we lived in Leeds, England. I walked home for lunch. I think the lunch break was about 90 minutes or more.
I was in primary school in Queensland, Australia from 1988 onwards. We had 20 mins for morning tea and 45 minutes for lunch. We also got to play before school if we came early.
We had a very large playground with wooden climbing equipment, and a small forested area. The older kids got the whole oval, a big hillside with play equipment and the asphalt sport courts. It was hot so we stuck to the shade mostly. We were also allowed to spend lunch in the library which I did somewhat often.
I spent my time collecting rocks, swinging on the bars and building cubbies. I spent a lot of time pretending very detailed worlds in that little forest. It really was idyllic.
I remember one teacher for the entire playground of 300 kids, and they were always a benign or sometimes helpful presence, only intervening when they saw a kid really needing help or in case of injury, or if kids went off into the super dangerous out-of-bounds areas (storm water drains usually). I'm really glad they were there, I always felt the correct kind of adult presence. I remember two major injuries - one girl broke her wrist falling off the bars doing a flip and another kid broke her ankle playing netball and we didn't find out until later cause her mum made her walk it off. We all had a lot of fun, but I do remember being scared of the bigger rougher kids.
Early 1990s in elementary school in Canada, during the winters THE ENTIRE SCHOOL would pull on their boots and coats, drag their sleds outside and sled down a hill next to the school. I do not recall any teachers anywhere nearby the sledding hill.
During lunch, I would simply skip out the doors to the school and race home as fast as I could for a hot lunch made by my mother. Imagine that today, kids just walking out of school to go home for lunch! I had no idea just how amazing that was.
In a small town in Georgia (country, not the state) in the mid 90ies, we only had 5 minute breaks and one 10 or 15 minute break at noon. We didn't have lunch at school. We played outside, unsupervised, mostly dodgeball.
What a great discussion topic and question! I enjoyed reading about your recess and lunch time in the 50's. I was a child of the 80's and grew up in northern Louisiana. I recall having two recesses a day-one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We could have a snack with us during one of the recesses. We had a regular playground with a jungle gym and slides and probably swings. I can remember one kid (not in my class) falling and breaking their arm. Our lunch was in the cafeteria but I don't recall many lunch ladies monitoring us. Our teachers monitored recess but I don't recall them ever having to break up any fights/arguments or being involved much at all. Recess could be taken away for misbehavior and you had to sit against a wall and watch your friends have fun. (A consequence that I regretfully used when I was also an elementary school teacher. Forgive me, my former students!) I do remember once when a pair of 5th graders attempted to get married on the playground during recess. A teacher quickly ran down to break up that wedding!
I was in elementary school from 2006-2011. Recess was 15 minutes after lunch in a playground behind the school. An aide stood near the door and watched over us. Most of the children preferred to climb on the playground structures or play kickball; I was a quiet and eccentric kid and preferred to walk on the short wooden beam that kept the pebbles inside the playground as if it were a balance beam.
My strongest specific memory of recess is being coerced by some of the boys into hiding behind a bench and kissing a boy I'd claimed to "like-like" out of social pressure to have a crush on someone, then being scolded by the aide that I wasn't old enough for that. I'd already felt an indescribable "dirty," almost depressed emotion after the unwanted kiss, and the aide's reaction made me feel deeply ashamed and misunderstood. In hindsight, she must have meant well, only intending to warn me not to do things like that until I was older for my own good.
I was born in 1955, and in the '60s I remember recess three times a day: 15 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes after lunch, and 15 minutes around 2:00. School ended at 3:00. We had swing sets, monkey bars, seesaws, 4-square and hopscotch grids. There was a playing field for kickball, and there were woods to play in as well. Wild strawberries grew along the edge of the field. There were teachers as recess monitors, but we pretty much ignored them until it was time to line up and go inside. When it rained, we either stayed in the classroom (I played tic-tac-toe with a boy I only interacted with for that game) or we went to the gym to play crab soccer. In junior high and senior high recess disappeared, but the period for lunch was a full class period--47 minutes-- and we'd go outside once we finished eating.
We had nearly an acre of land to run around on, playing kiss or kill (always kill), monkey bars to do death drops, plus the tarmac area for ball play (4-6 grade). Somehow we knew we weren’t allowed into the woods behind, I guess 🤷♀️ Ah, the 70s…
I don't really have much recollection about kindergarten and recess. It was only a half day. I went to school in Meriden Connecticut. This was in 1958. In first grade, at Saint Rose's school, also in Meriden Connecticut I have one very powerful memory from the very last day of school in first grade. On that day, one of my neighbors who was four years older than I, was was organizing a round of boxing matches set up for each grade before school started. He asked me to represent our first grade class and I did it against a good friend of mine named, Keith. So that morning, as soon as I got to the playground, which had a line down the middle and divided the boys from the girls, my friend and neighbor, put boxing gloves on me and on my friend Keith, and we boxed. I beat him rather soundly, but I didn't realize that he really couldn't defend himself as his gloves were not tied on tightly.. With all the cheering and hollering, I just kept on swinging. But then, one of the nuns showed up and Keith and I were taken to the office of mother superior. Shortly thereafter she can you pass a very emotional tongue lashing and then sent us off for our final day of school. In second grade, I had an angel of a nun for a teacher. And often times, during recess we played aluminum foil baseball. The game involves taking the aluminum foil that was used back then to wrap everyone's lunch sandwiches and folding them into a baseball that you could throw and hit. Sister regularly joined our games. We also o played a game with some people being in prison and other people trying to free them from prison. It involved a great deal of wrestling. For third and fourth grade, I think we generally stuck to that routine. We also used to flip baseball cards. A form of gambling, I guess, in that game, you and your opponent held a baseball card and then made it spin and land on the ground. One person won the other person's cards depending on whether or not they matched or didn't match after being flipped. And also, in fifth grade I can remember that on snowy days we played tackle tag, which is just like the normal game of tag except you had to tackle people and knock them off their feet onto the concrete surface, which was generally softened somewhat by snow, the snow being the occasion for having such a contest. In sixth grade, I moved to Norwood Massachusetts and in our recess sessions we often played football or baseball. If we played football, we often had one of the sixth grade teachers, both of whom were men, served as the quarterback for both teams, as this seemed most fair. There was also a nice baseball field nearby where we would play for the length of the entire recess. And these games were all pretty much segregated by grade level. So I moved to Norwood in sixth grade, and most of the activities I was involved with during recess involved only six graders, always males. But not as strictly segregated as in Saint Rose's playground which had a distinct white line dividing the boys half from the girls half.
I was in grade school from starting in 1988 and recess was awesome! We played King of the mountain on big mounds of snow, and had one of those trendy wooden playgrounds that were all the rage in the 80s and 90s. Weather was never a problem, and we were in New Hampshire! Kids would bring all of their winter weather to school change into it before recess, and then change back afterwards. Recess was never something that was taken away from us as a punishment and lasted way longer than my kids' recess ever did when they were in school (we homeschool now). I also recall the teachers not being overly protective either. We just got to play freely.
I started kindergarten in 2000, rural northeastern NC. I do not ever recall being allowed outside at lunch time, it was only 20-30 mins long though. In elementary school, we had recess which was about 20-30 mins long. I remember more time in the younger grades but not a lot.
There were what would not be called dangerous playgrounds, we played tag, I do believe we had to stay within eyesight of the recess attendant but it was huge, multiple playground structures, sand, black tops, open space and then there was a huge field beyond that, but I do believe it was off limits.
1985 in San Mateo California. I was 7 and I played kickball and we would pretend to get married 😂. A lot of chasing boys and hanging with my best friend.
I was a kid in Minnesota in the 70s. We had an hour of recess every day, even when the temps were well below zero. There were two playground aides who would occasionally blow their whistle and yell at the rowdiest kids, but mostly we were totally free to range around and do whatever we wanted.
Besides the usual tag, jump rope, and playing on the playground equipment, we girls would play Four Square, where we’d stand in a grid. Someone would name a category (say, “horses,” or “dog breeds” or “tv shows”), and we would bounce the ball to each other. As you caught the ball, you said a name from the category. If you couldn’t think of a name, you were out. The game continued until there was one girl standing, and she got to announce the next category.
I also remember the occasional skinned knees and banged heads (I once knocked myself out running through a jungle gym and trying not to get tagged by the Pickle in the Middle). These minor injuries were a totally normal part of life and no big deal—and certainly not so bad as to justify a litany of safety rules!
I was born in 85 and went to school in NC near the capital. We never had any completely unsupervised time at lunch or recess in elementary school. I believe we were expected to stay in the lunchroom during lunch. During outside recess our play was supervised from a distance, but it was undirected and we played behind trees and other places that might not be allowed today due to concerns of sexual abuse. Gym time was also memorable for me--I believe that was a separate class, and that it would rotate between activities like dodge ball, and active drama activities.
My lunch hour in the 60/70’s was actually “lunch hour and a half”….I walked home for lunch with my neighbourhood friend often exploring along the route home and back. Our recess breaks at school often involved a self organized soccer tournament …. I remember it being a fairly complex schedule of teams ( all with NHL team names living in Canada)…no adults were involved from my perception….results and stats were tabulated daily …..we couldn’t wait to play! We also traded hockey cards with older and younger kids learning some tough lessons about salesmanship along the way….we also gambled away our marble collections, wrestled staging many pretend fights, played variations on “dodgeball”, climbed everything etc etc….good times!
I attended primary school in England in the late 90s. We had 20 minute morning recess and around an hour for lunch. Younger kids (4-7 year olds) had an additional 15 minute afternoon recess. I remember being ten years old and hearing the younger kids out playing during their afternoon recess and deeply wishing I still had the same freedom!
I never attended a school with a cool playground. That was in the future or past, I guess. But there were always swings (from which we liked to jump at the high point; and which we never ceased believing that we had once seen someone, or perhaps ourselves, go "all the way over") and rings and a bar on chains you could flip over; and at one school a ready-painted 4-square which we used avidly (I can particularly recollect calling "Tall Texan!" among other things - I'm fascinated with the way these things persist, like girls doing "Bobo Skeewottentotten" with their hands); there was often a jump rope I guess supplied by the school, and girls particularly loved to skip, going in and out - sometimes with two going at a time. We liked to draw an elaborate hopscotch layout more so than actually playing it, but we did that too. There was tetherball, surprisingly engaging; and perhaps a seesaw, which in any case managed to combine pleasure with the possibility of a jarring drop. If I could see that space with adult eyes, I would probably be nonplussed - but kids can do a lot with a little. My mother's generation played marbles, and jacks - but we never did and when she tried to show me as an adult that proved to be a skill you have to learn when small.
A merry go round (what we called the thing that spun round as you pushed it, running, then jumped on) was the one thing that occasionally scared me, if a bigger kid came along, but I loved it all the same. I don't think my school had anything that fun, though.
I didn't pay that much attention to what the boys played. Basketball probably. I wasn't good at that, but did enjoy playing "Around the World" with other girls, shooting granny style, sadly. Everyone played tag, and I remember girls saw it as a sort of proxy flirtation, as to who was sweet on whom, while I'm not sure the boys particularly did. But no one was ever sweet on me, so I just enjoyed the running (and freezing, or shouting the name of a TV show which we called "TV tag" but I can't remember how that worked).
We played red light, green light and tug-of-war and red rover. The teacher often organized the latter which would now probably provoke a lawsuit.
I particularly asked for a rope for Christmas so that we could play tug-of-war at home on the street, where we played the school games like four square, where the concrete of the street was neatly divided into a cross. And others, a game we called bombs away, where someone throws up a ball, everyone runs, the designated person catches it - and then gets to take 3 steps and peg the hell out of someone, who's now it.
(The popular variant in my kid's day involved a wall and a ball and was called "Spread Eagle" or wallball, I think.)
A driveway with a gate was useful for any sort of back and forth proto-volleyball-type game.
Autumn brought out a sudden desire to rake, for obvious reasons, in 70s kids who were otherwise very lazy.
We played "Tin Can Alley" and two-below (football) and more "pegging", this time on bikes as we rode past, and still more pegging, of cars (and running, especially if kumquats were involved); in fact, many games involved first establishing "pegging - or no pegging" allowed? And man-in-the-middle with a frisbee, and hotbox, a base-running game. So much hotbox: but in addition to baseball gloves you need two trees the right distance apart. Statues. Colored Eggs, a wonderful game. Kickball and "baseball" running full tilt into a lamppost as first base, which the homeowner probably loved. You couldn't run past first; you'd leave yourself open to pegging ;-).
We had for a couple years a passion for croquet.
When we were old enough to be out in the dark, we played ghost in the graveyard or sardines in all the nooks and crannies of our suburban street. There was another game called midnight or 12 o clock but I can't remember how it went. There was no better feeling than playing spooky games in a safe neighborhood, in the dark.
We lived in north Pennsylvania in the winter of 1976-77 when the snow storms were terrible. For recess when I was in 5th grade, we bundled up twice a day in preparation for the freezing cold. We would run up a little hill and slide down to the playground that was iced over and go back up the hill again. Fast forward to 2004-2009 when my son was in elementary school in south Florida: it was always TOO HOT, or TOO COLD, or TOO RAINY for them to go out for recess.
I believe we had two short 15 minute recesses and a long lunch. We ate quickly outside in the Ramada to get out to play.
There was quite a large grass yard with playground equipment that would be nuclear in the Phoenix heat. I recall making sure my uniform skirt covered the parts of me that touched any equipment. We also had a blacktop that we could literally pull melty pieces up from when it was hot enough. There was a brick wall separating the grass from the neighborhood behind it.
I am sure we had rules (it was Catholic school after all), but I honestly can’t recall any, so they must have not been too restrictive. We ran around, played basketball, kickball, dodgeball, tag. Lots of jump rope games, jumping off swings, and gymnastics in the grass.
We had teachers supervising but never closely. I recall them sitting on a bench and not moving or really watching. I’d have to go to them when injured. Got accidentally kicked in the lip pretty badly that required 34 stitches. Broke my arm on the bars doing a “death drop.” No adult ever noticed until I went to them.
As we got older there was a lot of cattiness amongst the girls. No one ever regulated it or probably even knew.
We did have to line up by girls and boys to go inside.
I went to a Catholic grammar school in Queens, NY. We had an hour lunch/recess break as well. Most of us walked home for lunch, ate quickly (maybe while watching Winky Dink on TV), then walked back to school. Our recess area was blacktop only. No basketball hoops, no equipment but what we brought with us. We would play clapping games, hand ball, or jump rope. I suppose there were chasing games as well. Occasionally a fight would break out among the boys, and that is when a nun or two would come outside to intervene. Otherwise, we saw no adults until the bell rang for us to line up and re-enter the building. This was in the late 60's and early 70's.
Let’s see. I grew up in a farm town in Utah in the 90s. I remember having a morning recess and a lunch/play time, possibly two recesses in the earlier years, but I can’t be sure. I think the time was 20-30 minutes for recess, and 30 minutes for lunch recess. Everyone stayed on campus for lunch. I remember having one adult recess attendant on the playground, basically just a lifeguard that would be there in case there was an emergency, but mostly didn’t get involved. We played on the monkey bars, zip line, super wide metal slide that can slide many kids at once and got very hot when sunny. My girl friends and I would just wander around the edges and talk or sit under a tree picking grass to make into little bird nests as we talked. We also had options of 4square, basketball, hop scotch, and jump ropes. One day (4th grade-10yr old)I was inspired to lead the kids from the whole grade in a game of red rover. That game got broken up by the adults right away. That was deflating. I remember we were punished for being too loud in the lunch room (so echoey in there) and had to sit in the gym for recess and read. In 5th and 6th grade, my girlfriends and I practiced cheerleading during recess doing stunting, tumbling, and acrobatics. We were mostly left to our own devices, but there was a recess lady or two that tried to stop us because it made her nervous. There was often a game of dodge ball happening in the gym on winter days and a ball game in the field on warmer days. In winter we would bundle up and go out to play in the snow making snow angels or throwing snowballs or whatever.
Not my story, but my now 14 yr old son's. While still in public school, 4th grade my son like mist boys his age had TONS of energy. They were only given a 30 minute recess once a day, on a playground but with no "toys"...so the boys started bringing their own basketballs or footballs from home. But after a day or two were told that wasn't allowed because they were "being too rough". So they improvised, as boys often do and began tossing, kicking and running after a single serve water bottle. This was also very soon removed as an option of something to play with. Made no sense to this mother of four. Eventually we pulled our children out of the public school system, and he enjoys his days of freedom to be all boy, all day. So thankful for this option!!!
1968 I was ten years old and lived in a small college town called California, Pennsylvania. I attended the college lab school. What I remember most was playing kickball at lunch and maybe recess. I was a tomboy and loved kickball. I recall boys and girls both played. 1969 I attended the same school. I was fortunate to walk to school. After school we played pick-up football in the street, mostly boys, but i remember playing often. I was a paper girl, so I had to deliver my papers usually before I played. At the age of ten and eleven I walked downtown on my own, picked up the papers, delivered them and then joined neighborhood kids to play. I loved the freedom of playing outside and I'm striving to find ways to give children that freedom to play.
Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1970s our main school playground was a slope of rough tarmac with a flat, smooth area at the front of the Victorian building reserved for infants ( under 8s). There were various boiler rooms and outbuildings with narrow spaces where children loved to squeeze in for games of hide and seek, or bullying and extortion of dinner money. Fights were fairly common and children would stand in a circle, chanting “fight” until the janny appeared in his brown dust jacket to break it up.
In winter we made slides down the rough hill and if you slipped, the tarmac would rip your flesh so there would be another visit to the janny for some yellow cream and a plaster. There were also games of British Bulldog where long lines of over 50 players faced each other off and the object was to batter through each others’ line. This game was never banned in our school. Skipping was another popular game for girls but some boys too. Generally there would be two queues of players to “jump in” from either end to rhymes like
Granny’s in the kitchen doin some stitchin
In comes the bogeyman and out goes SHE!
At this point the cawers would whip up the pace of the ropes and shout
Salt, mustard, vinegar, PEPPER!
Whoever survived this was then Granny.
There was much less time for play at lunch than break, as our school dinners were served in sittings and if you were at second sitting much of the first half of lunch was spent in a queue.
In my rural North Georgia elementary school in the late 1990s, normally we would have a 25-30min recess where, if we had behaved well and completed assignments, we were allowed to play on our small but functional playground. Teachers would usually not hover over us, but most games consisted of tag, Four Square, or swinging.
When I was in 5th grade, my school installed a new, shiny metal slide. One day after school, while my mom had a meeting with a teacher, my brothers and I were allowed to play on the playground unsupervised. A few minutes into playtime, the assistant principal came out to the playground carrying a box of wax paper from the cafeteria. He asked us how we liked the new playground equipment and if the slide was fast. Then, he ripped off four rectangular sheets of wax paper and handed three of them to my brothers and me. He took the fourth sheet and began climbing the steps to the top of the new slide. He then told us to watch as he placed the wax paper onto the slide, sat down, and zoomed down the slide in a blur. With his tie flapping over his shoulder in the breeze, he zipped off the end of the slide hitting the ground below with a loud thump. His dress pants were covered in wood chips as he stood up and turned to give us a wink and a smile. We giggled excitedly at the sight before we raced each other to the top of the slide to follow suit. That afternoon, we took turn after turn using our wax paper sleds on the hot slick tin. I'll never forget the look of disbelief on my classmates' faces the next day when I told them what we were allowed to do! It's one of my best childhood memories.
Hi Peter
Great idea! Love the previous memories - this really clicks.
I went to primary school (6-10) in north west London in the mid 1960s, and I remember three breaks - two of about 20 minute morning and afternoon and a I hour lunch break. In that lunch time, more or less the whole school used to trek out of the gates and in a long gaggle down the street, over the road and into a green space called 'the Burial Ground', because that's what it was. It dated back at least to the early nineteenth century, probably before, and it had lawns and flowers and bushes and a tangle of plants over the variously maintained graves. There were no teachers or anything with us - it was entirely self-organized with the older kids spontaneously at the head of the line - and they used to round everyone up in time to get back, I don't remember any issues of being late etc etc (as Molesworth if anyone knows that cartoon by R Searle would say) - there was a little playground too, but we generally chased each other everywhere else. There was never any problem that I remember about respecting the monuments or the place generally and if it had been my grave we were dancing by (not on as far as I recall) I'd have been happy to see kids alive and kicking. I don't mean to sound like Wordsworth filling his childhood with retrospective meaning (yes I used to teach English) but I do definitely at times know I had a sense of life and what I'd call 'something else' from a kid's perspective blended together into a whole, though I don't suppose I'd have expressed it quite that way.
Look forward to seeing more of other people's stories - best to everyone from cloudy London, George
Dear Prof Gray, I think your thesis is excellent. I remember we were basically free to do anything we wanted during recess and lunch break. I remember even sometimes I would go home to eat lunch. One thing I want to say is because there was no supervision basically, sometimes I would get bullied as I was the only Asian looking kid in my class. But would I want to change into the prisons we have today at school because of that? No. Freedom to play is best.
My fondest memories of elementary school are of recess. This was in the 1990s in an international school in S E Asia. I don't remember exactly, but morning break was probably 20 minutes and lunch recess 45 minutes. During lunch we had a choice of going to the library, to the outdoor playground, or to the computer lab where we could play games on the PCs. The outdoor space included a covered play area (this was in the tropics so lots of sun and/or rain) with lots of equipment like jump ropes, balls, hopscotch and four square. Then there was a huge field with a playground at either end with swings, slides, jungle gym and so on. There was a soccer/football pitch, a basketball court, and tetherball. We were supervised by school support staff who also supervised in the cafeteria and the school buses. It was rare to interact with these support staff - they certainly didn't intervene in our play. My perception was that their main job was to blow a whistle when it was time to go back inside. Teachers were only seen coming to get their lunch in the cafeteria and would then disappear.
Now as an adult, I work in the same type of school myself, and have never worked in a school with so many facilities and options at recess, as I had when I was a student! Moreover, teachers are now required to be in the cafeteria to supervise students during lunch, and outside on the playground to monitor students during recess. School support staff are not used for supervision as it is felt they will be too permissive, not monitor properly and not enforce the rules, or these support staff positions have been eliminated altogether. I've sat in many faculty meetings where teachers were lectured that during playground duty, they must not look at their phones, must actively supervise students at all times, and enforce rules and consequences. Teachers complain that recess just causes problems because the students are bullying each other while away from direct supervision. Or that the students don't like recess and don't want to go. All these recess and lunch duties are a burden on the teachers, who may not get a break during the school day or be able to eat lunch in peace. Note that this is not in a stretched public school, but private schools charging hefty tuition.
I'm a school librarian and have always been required to be on duty for students who want to come to the library during break times. When I was a kid, the library was always a quiet place to retreat at recess, with just a few kids there to check out a new book in between class visits -- everyone else was outdoors. Nowadays, we always have issues with overcrowding, as hordes of kids flock there to sit in the air conditioning/heating and avoid being outside. Only a couple are there to actually read. I assume they spend most of their time indoors and don't like being outside, and have given up trying to play out there since the supervision by teachers is so onerous.
The other big difference is the computer games. I enjoyed playing SimCity, Oregon Trail, KidPix and such in the school computer lab at recess. I guess in those days, it was considered beneficial for children to learn how to use computers, so as students in a wealthy private school, this was provided for us. But I don't remember any addictive behaviour, fighting over computers, kids refusing to stop playing to go back to class etc. Sadly this is how kids are with games and devices now. I can't even offer educational games on the library iPads/laptops because it causes so much disruptive behaviour. I don't think it's the games themselves, but (as Peter has talked about), computer/video games represent the only remaining opportunity these children have for free play, and they are desperate for it. It's very sad, and I really feel for the kids.
I love this thread. My 1970s elementary school had 30 minutes of recess in the morning and an hour at lunch — plenty of time to walk home for lunch or to go out and play four-square or kickball, walk around the massive perimeter practicing swear words w your best friend, and climb and/or play in the massive evergreens. There may have been another short recess in the afternoon. Oh - we also had a jungle gym, teeter totters (ask your best friend to give you bumps), swings you could jump out of, slides, and a carousel with horizontal bars you could use to hang upside down by your knees while the carousel was spinning.
I taught environmental education at a public elementary school from 2011-2022 and was sad by how much recess had changed. K-2 had two 20-minute recesses but the older kids only had the one at lunchtime. You couldn’t go until a specific time, at which point the teacher would escort the class clear across the building to the playground bc during a renovation the moved the playground away from the cafeteria. If it looked gray or was drizzling, many teachers wouldn’t go out. Some wouldn’t go out if it was snowing - but many others delighted in the snow. There was one small slide, swings and a thing with stairs that you could “climb.” There was also a field for the older kids and basketball hoops.
My daughter attended Lake George Elementary in Lake George, NY, it was a rural community an hour north of Albany, NY. Recess, even in the snowy winter was held outside in a grass area on the edge of the woods for 30 minutes each day. The children were allowed to dig in the snow, play with the leaves, and sometimes even play in the mud. The principal of the school had been a physical education teacher and emphasized the importance of physical activity. The school had physical education every day, and frequently outside even in less than perfect days. Physical education included rougher activities like wrestling. This was recent, 2016-2020. Before and after school there were frequently children found at the local church, not because they had found religion, but the church was by the bus stop and allowed the children to play, and play they did. Even some of the jr high/high students would play. We now live close to nyc and my 15 year old talks about her childhood experiences in a way her peers do not grasp as she had the freedom to play and build.
Your last post about the restrictions placed on kids now really resonated. I had just FaceTimed with my 7-year-old granddaughter who goes to a public school in Los Angeles. I was shocked to learn that tag and all chasing games were verboten. Apparently kids had fallen on the asphalt and scraped their knees. Not sure if this rule came from the school or originated with parents who found a scraped knee unacceptable. There's no climbing equipment on this piece of asphalt and balls are also not available. I think there is a tetherball set up. My daughter, as a parent volunteer, organized the school's field day. Last year they had a 50 yard dash but that was nixed this year as again, parents complained because kids fell. These injuries were minor—scrapes. This year, field day will involve less movement.
My granddaughter's recess contrasts sharply with mine from the 1960s. We had a 30 minute recess in the morning and an hour including lunch. I don't remember any adult supervision though someone may have been keeping an eye on us. There were swings and maybe a slide. Girls and boys mostly played separately. I recall doing a lot of jump rope, Chinese jump rope, and hand clapping games. We also had PE at least 3 times/week. In general the school day allowed time for much more movement, and unsupervised movement than today's recess
I went to primary school in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1960s. Recess was 20 or 30 minutes, and lunch time around an hour. We did a lot of running around and chasing each other, and played a lot of football, cricket or rugby. A pair of teachers walked around “supervising”, but there had to be a really serious problem for them to intervene. Indeed, I have no memories of incidents requiring teacher intervention. Lunch was brown bag, and we ate our sandwiches in the playground.
Secondary/high school was in Lusaka, Zambia in the 1970s. Recess was 30 min and lunch 90 min. Some of us went home, others to have lunch at the nearby student hostel and the rest ate their sandwiches. There was no teacher supervision. We either walked around in groups of friends (this was adolescence, so we tried to look cool!) or played a game of football, basketball or tennis. I was a basketball freak and we always played a game after lunch before returning to classes.
In short, we were free to just be children, with teachers doing token supervision, or without any supervision at all.
Peter, you might recall I emailed you almost years ago (2014 fall) when my children's elementary school in Central Florida took away recess completely. This topic is so close to my heart, and painful to recall as it unfortunately began a long journey of challenge (not to mention grief, anger, etc) as a parent.
In previous years, the students had been allowed outside to the supervised playground area that contained a small metal jungle gym and a bunch of fields. If they finished their lunch, they were allowed to raise their hands and be let outside. My son, 9 years old, was one of the many kids who ate as fast at they could so that their free time could be spent out doors in freedom. He would usually participate in a group of kids who would create teams and various informal games like kickball, tag, and others I can't remember the names of.
The decision to "take away recess" in the fall of 2014 or spring 2015 happened at the school level, not county-wide, as far as I'm aware. The principal rebuffed our outcry and said it wasn't "gone" it was just rescheduled, and children had to stay in the cafeteria for the entire allotted lunch time (which I believe had been shortened to allow for more classroom time... coincidentally this was the year the FSA, a new statewide assessment system that linked teacher raises to student performance...) was to allow individual teachers to designate time for recess according to their schedules. So it seems it was 1. to give teachers an opportunity to provide MORE structured instruction aka test prep. But really, it was a staffing problem. Upon a lot of further push back from my self and, sadly, just a couple of other parents, I learned that there had been a couple of broken bones, etc, and the school supposedly was unable to hire additional staff to "properly supervise for safety." And they "couldn't ask teachers to give up their lunchtime" to do so...
This was absolutely devastating for my son and for our family. His teacher was one of the ones who wanted more time for test prep. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS A GIFTED CLASS and the students were surely already going to achieve high scores. She rarely let them outside... EVEN THOUGH IT WAS FLORIDA and sunny nearly every day. My son came home crying most days. Sometimes she would turn on YouTube and allow them some time to move around with recordings of the video game "Just Dance," but the pop music and cheesy videos did not appeal to my son, so he would just sit and become depressed about his life in that tiny classroom all day. Additionally, when he did have a break from the classroom, he had to sit in a sterile cafeteria for 30 minutes, when the sun was outside shining and he desperately needed to move and play!
He's now 18 by the way, graduated last year, and going to college next fall. I can honestly say that was the beginning of a severe decline in his educational experience. We tried many other types of learning environments after (a year of homeschool included) but he desperately wanted to be with his peers and friends, so he ended up trudging his way through that horrendous system. We finally were able to move out of the state a year and a half ago, getting my youngest child started in High School in Colorado where down the street, I enjoy seeing the elementary kids roam freely outdoors every day for what seems like long periods of time... shockingly, very lightly supervised! They're even allowed to use all the fields and open space (and it's a huge property). Florida school had these ridiculous boundaries, some fields were "too far," etc.
I hope that helps you with a more recent timeline. I can't remember recess too much in my life other than the comparison that playground equipment was much more basic, aka DANGEROUS, and I did enjoy the endless rows of swings, and the games we would make up in the fields.
My elementary school in suburban Maryland in the mid-1970s was pretty similar to how you describe 1950s Minnesota. I have especially fond memories of tag (which sometimes involved falling) and tetherball (which sometimes involved getting whacked in the face).
I remember a stern music teacher, Mrs. Jackson, who had an accent that made her hard to understand. When she angrily said "this is a treble clef" I thought she was saying "this is a trouble class." I also remember that at the top left corner of the board were the letters UATW, where the names of miscreants would be written - indicating they had to stand Up Against The Wall during recess. Mrs. Jackson was a sadistic tyrant who somehow managed to make music (which I have always loved very intensely) boring. This is the personality type that gives us the new playground rules.
I can also offer a control experiment - my brother is 13 years younger than me and by the time he was going to the same elementary school in the late 80s, the recess rules were a lot closer to UATW than they were to actual play.
My interest in biology began in the woods behind our house. My brother never played in the woods. Same parents, same neighborhood, but something happened between 1975 and 1988 that suddenly made everybody think playing in the woods is how you end up on a milk carton. The faulty risk-perception deprived my brother of experiences I found incredibly valuable.
I grew up in northern Utah in the 1980s and early 90s, and have a few specific memories of recess. One of my fondest memories is swinging on very long chained swings. There was a large dome shaped structure that felt 20 feet high and had about 5 or 6 swings on in. At one point in time there was an inflated ball hanging in the center and we tried to kick it at the peak of the swing. When the ball was no longer there we tried to stretch and kick the chain that was prob a foot long or so. We went high enough that we would get slack in the chain and would have a few second of free fall before the chains caught us again. I loved it! This structure was also regularly climbed on and I don't recall getting in trouble for it. We also had these odd swings we called gliders that were pumped by hand while you sat inside a frame over a seat. I remember at least 1 or 2 kids got hit in the head with these because they wandered too close to them. They were eventually removed a few years after I moved into Jr high. I also remember swinging bars. They were simple bars of varying heights that we would hook one knee over and then spin around them head over heels. Inevitably one year we would be too tall and would hit our heads in the dirt beneath them. I also remember lots of football, kickball, red rover, building snowmen, tag, and other field games. There was lots of open space and kids often wandered very far from the playground, but I don't recall anyone getting in trouble for it. Snowballs were a bit touch and go as we got older. I remember one kid getting in trouble for throwing one at me and hitting me in the face. I tackled him afterward and the recess monitor lady got mad at me. But when I told her about the snowball she hauled him off instead. But generally speaking snowball fights were pretty regualr and accepted. I don't recall there being more than 2 recess ladies. And I often remember teachers being out in the morning and afternoon recesses and 2 non teachers out at lunch. One teacher used a large handbell to bring us in and another one could whistle so loud the whole playground could hear her. We had tall metal slides, teeter totters, and I do recall a smaller plastic structure for the younger kids on one side of the school. Great memories.
Elementary school in the latter half of the 1980s is Southern California. I remember there was always an adult or two around, whom I knew I could go to if I got hurt. Definitely closed campuses, though sneaking out through gates was not impossible if one wanted to—then again, I don’t recall having much desire to escape recess!
We had ball games available (four square, tether ball, wall ball with walls erected specifically for the purpose), high slides, swings, vertical climbing bars and monkey bars, balance beams, and gymnast bars. I remember in kindergarten trikes and a track for trike races, and in third grade I remember a merry go round. I went to 4 different elementary schools from k to 6th.
Sometimes we would set up co-ed softball games in the later years. There was a lot of walking around with other girls on what seem in my memory to be vast campuses compared to what my kids have here at our local elementary schools in western Washington state, the creation and recitation of rhyming and clapping games, jumping rope with increasing complexity, demonstrations of gymnastics on the parallel bars, and not a small amount of exclusionary practices, establishing in and out groups of girls. Quite a bit of showing off of physical skills and flirting with boys.
There seemed plenty of time to play one thing and then another and another, though never as much time as we all would have liked.
My first elementary school was in New Mexico circa 1992-95, but I can’t remember how long we had for recess. We had dirt playground, occasionally some grass on a lower “field,” typical playground equipment and a ton of large swings. Boys played football on the “field” mostly, or tag. Girls swung and talked. Occasionally we wrote in the dirt.
Moved to Maryland in 1996, the first school I was at was lame— no swings, were not allowed to do the monkey bars, big field area and blacktop. I think there was limited basketballs that everyone fought over, not many other balls I can remember.
For 4th and 5th grade, moved to different school and recess was great. Circa 1997-1999. We had a big field, blacktop, two basketball courts, and playground equipment. Still no swings. Boys played a big game of soccer in the field and basketball. I got tired of the boys not letting me play basketball, so we started our own girls only game on the next court. Super fun. Occasionally we played four-square, and invented our own version of it, and jumped a lot of rope. Probably got about 45 min to an hour. It was the best.
I attended three primary schools, in rural and urban areas. I will describe the most rural and the urban one, since they were the most different.
My best memories were from them most rural area:
a) 1991 - 1993 living in Tyrol, Austria. It is a mountainous area and most people there were either farmers, craftsmen or working in tourism.
b) School was from morning to noon. Lunch was at home and afternoon was off. All mothers were stay-at-home mothers. The concept of daycare did not exist in this area. Recess was therefore 5-15 minute breaks between classes. My school was tiny (about 40 kids in the whole school). All kids played on a paved place in front of the school. When recess ended, the headmaster came to the door and rang a cowbell. All kids commuted to and from school on foot, except some kids who lived high up on the mountain, who used a special school bus to commute.
c) At recess, boys were almost exclusively fighting for fun. Girls were playing skipping games (gummitwist) and exchanging stickers. I was a tomboy and participated in both boy's and girl's activities. Since all kids mixed at recess (ages 6-10 years), I also remember the older girls being nice to me and including me in their games. Although there was a lot of physical fighting, I do not remember any bullying and generally, aggression levels were very low. I remember this as a time of fun and peace. In the afternoons, there was no school.
d) I do not remember any supervision at recess and also no supervision when playing after school.
My memories from the urban are were a bit different:
a) 1994 - 1995 living in Vienna, capital city of Austria.
b) School was from morning to noon. Lunch at home, afternoons off.
c) Recess was mostly spent in the classroom. It was very loud and chaotic. There was a children's home nearby and many children from there were in our class. Many of them were sad and lonely and therefore loud and disorganized. I spent most of recess sitting at my desk, sticking the fingers in my ears and reading. Kids were exchanging pornographic images and cigarettes (8-10 years old). They did not really play. I did not feel comfortable.
d) I do not remember any supervision. Parents and Teachers in Vienna at 1995 were much more concerned with safety, though. For example, my mother let my little sister (5 years old) walk to the kindergarten on her own (it was just down the street), but the kindergarten teachers did not allow for this. Before, in Tyrol, this was possible.
1980s at an international school in West Africa under the auspices of the US Embassy -- I believe we had about 45 minutes to eat our lunch and then play outdoors. Minimal supervision, but we did stay on the school campus. Minimal playground equipment, too! There were tetherball courts, one set of swings, and a decommissioned VW bus for us to play on. The doors had been removed and the fluids drained, but it was otherwise intact. All on dirt/sand by the way. No rubber mulch or cushioned mats. Note that although there was a nurse on staff, there was no American-style ER nearby nor ambulance service of a functional type in the city! Still, we had no real restrictions on our play.
I remember no specific rules about what we could and could not do, other than teachers stepping in if there were serious fights, but I don't remember any truly serious fighting anyway.
1970’s public elementary school in Connecticut:
Short morning recess , long lunch/recess then another short afternoon recess from 1st grade to 4th. We lost some minutes off the morning and afternoon recess time in 5th and 6th grade, but still had the long lunch/recess.
There was always a teacher outside with us but we had free roam of the whole school yard and black top. I used to get scolded for playing the Brook and the woods.
There was Old metal playground equipment and then they built these weird tire structures for us to play in. Plenty of injuries happened in the tires but I don’t remember a big deal being made it.
My son’s recess experience was way shorter and he was miserable. He has autism and is very bright. Standard issue elementary school was a disaster. Pulled him and my daughter out at the end of second grade. Best Decision Ever!
The kiddos never got in trouble for playing in the brook and the woods. : )
1990 The International School in a small island in the Philippines. We had a field with lots of trees, we had no yard duty teachers, just a security guard at the gate. We were unsupervised but managed to be on class on time,stay safe, and have the best time. We played around the trees. In our culture, we love these jumping spiders, we would collect them and let them fight. One classmate had a hurt jumping spider. We had no idea spiders laid eggs in an eggsac. We just thought she was pregnant. So we "tried" to save her baby, and operated on her with the sharp point of a compass. We had so much freedom, nothing bad happened. Now im a teacher in a public school in Australia. During yard duty, im expected to actively supervise. I cant help to think that we have dug such a deep hole of generations who cant take risks, that children these days dont know what to do with themselves with "free time" any more. Free time is equated to screen time. Not explore time, talk time, game time.... under my watch the grade 7-8 students rough play. They wrestle and chase each other. Other teachers say no to this. Before I stop anyone from rough playing I observe those playing look at their eyes and smiles. Most of the time they control when they see their mates are starting to be uncomfortable, and i don't intervene.... this is my little form of promoting play.... and actively advocating play
I’m a child of the 80’s. I started half day kindergarten in 89. In elementary school we had 2 recesses plus lunch/recess. I don’t remember how long each were. There were teachers outside but I don’t ever remember interacting with them. We would run to the edge of a field and play tag. My little one is supposed to start all day kindergarten next year. They get one 20 minute recess a day. Lunch is 30 minutes. A few schools advertise that kids get one 30 minute recess like it’s an amazing feat. My little one has free play almost all day long right now. She is supposed to go to a full day of kindergarten and get a 20-30 minute recess? Yikes. No thanks. We are looking at homeschooling options. I wish there was a Sudbury style school in Anchorage, AK.
I have just organised an online course on 'Children's Play and Folklore'. The first four sessions were run by Steve Roud and Julia Bishop, who are experts in this field (every folk song now has a 'Roud number' as Steve has collected and catalogued nearly 2,500!). I would love to share the sessions with you, Peter, and with all readers here. I think you'll find them really interesting. Here are the links: Session 1 - https://youtu.be/xcGUOnIo--U. Session 2 - https://youtu.be/XuUzoho-3Us. Session 3 -
https://youtu.be/DN7mn7k3oX8. Session 4 - https://youtu.be/M6itgvYBJY8. One of Julia's sessions included a wonderful film from 1950s Scotland. Hope you all enjoy!
I was born in 1956, about 15 miles to the south of London, UK. At that time it was a semi-rural area and I grew up on a smallholding (chickens, fruit, vegetables). I actually remember very little about playtimes (we usually call it 'playtime' in the UK - although, strangely, the school I went to from the age of 7 DID call it 'recess'!). I hated school so much and I never had a single friend until I was nine years old. So I remember walking round the outside of the playground by myself for ever. I think I do remember taking toy cars to school and playing with them there. From nine, I think we did do things like French skipping (with elastic) and skipping with ropes, but I don't recall anything else, I'm afraid. I'm sure our morning playtimes were about 20 minutes and lunchtime was at least an hour. It wasn't uncommon, at my infant school (age 4-7) for children to go home for lunch. However, at home I had immense freedom. The smallholding was quite large so I could roam around, collect warm eggs from under warm hens, climb trees, lie in the grass and look at the sky. We lived near a wood so I would go collecting sticks for beanpoles with my dad - and we would go on long walks across nearby hills where there were pig farms and kennels. I certainly don't remember much 'adult supervision' in playtime, either at home or at school. I am horrified to read that now, in primary schools, that afternoon play has disappeared completely and that lunch time is now around 40 minutes (in which teachers are expected to have their own lunch, supervise lunch, and run lunchtime clubs!). Sorry, my lack of memories of this are not much help to you!
1987-1993 two schools in a remote small town and a middle-sized city, China.
We had 10-minute breaks between 45-min classes morning and afternoon, and 2-hour lunch break when most kids walked home to take lunch and have naps. No teacher supervised at all.
Boys and girls played together in the small town school when I was younger. Chasing, teasing, jumping ropes, games with rules. Boys and girls separated in the city school when I was older. Jumping ropes and chatting are what I remembered.
No injuries remembered. Golden days.
1987-1989, I was 9 to 10 years old, at a primary school in Cheshire in the UK. There was a one-hour long lunch break and I think a thirty minute break in the morning and afternoon. In the winter, we played on the tarmac playground behind the school. In the summer, we could play on the school field too, which was pretty big, so we were far from adult eyes. Teachers didn't supervise us during breaks, but instead "dinner ladies" (dinner has stuck as the name for the meal in the middle of the day for schools in the UK), who were middle-aged ladies who came in just to supervise us during the breaks.
Boys played tag (called tick in our area) or football. Girls played some game where they jumped over elastic stretched between two pairs of girls legs. I remember some girls from our class role-playing working in McDonald's. There was also skipping (jump-rope). British bulldog (a kind of tag game) was banned in 1989. I remember our teacher coming out and saying we couldn't play it any more. He apologised and said it wasn't his idea, so presumably it came from the local education authority.
There were only two or three dinner ladies to supervise all the children, and I don't remember them being very mobile, so we weren't supervised very strictly. We had to negotiate and argue things out amongst ourselves for the most part.
So my experience comes from the UK in the 1970s and 1980s (all girls convent school). I always walked to school. In the 'primary' part of the school, we had an hour for lunch and 20 minutes for break morning and afternoon. No-one ever supervised, although I do recall that we knew where to go if there were any problems. Wet or dry, we were outside - either in the large green field or in the tarmac playground (very close to the classrooms). I recall a handful of playtimes inside when super-wet (but there wasn't really anywhere to go, other than the classrooms, so pretty dull). Outside, all of our games were self-directed (tag, stuck in the mud, running races, skipping ropes, elastics etc were all hugely popular, as was 'doing gymnastics' eg practising handstands and cartwheels). People would wander off in groups (large and small), and in ones and twos (the latter started to happen as we got older). These breaks were almost always fun (obviously the occasional fall out with friends) and definitely memorable; when asked how school was, my answers typically revolved around what we did during the breaks! Now I am writing this down, I also recall that we spent much of our time around lessons discussing what we would play at the next break and sometimes organising to bring in a particular piece of equipment if needed ready for the next day (eg another rope or ball etc).
Early 1970s in middle school in suburban NJ, we had lunch hour free. We bolted our lunches and then hit the playground, which was a dirt field and a bit of tarmac. The boys played "Kill the man with the ball", which you "won" by getting the ball to the gym at the end of lunch. This required crossing the tarmac bit, where getting tackled was a bit more serious. And, despite there being no point but honor in having the ball before the very end, people still struggled mightily to get it, with the inevitable result that they were brought down long before a chance of winning had appeared. No serious injuries resulted, but plenty of scrapes, etc. And it got a lot of excess energy out of us!
In the 1990s, my kids were in a Montessori elementary school in the very liberal community of Shaker Heights. They had relatively unsupervised time outside - I wrote about how rules evolved in a very Hayekian way (despite the fact that no one at the school would have read any Hayek or, among the teachers, approved of him!) there for the Foundation for Economic Education here: https://fee.org/articles/spontaneous-order-on-the-playground/
I attended a public elementary school near Colorado Springs school years 2002 through 2007.
If I remember correctly, we had two 30-minute recesses a day, and 30 minutes for lunch, indoors. I ate hot lunch, so after waiting in line, I ended up scarfing to try to finish my food in time to go back to class.
My elementary school used to have a small clump of scrub oak trees at the edge of the playground, where ladybugs lived. We were not allowed to enter the trees, because the teachers could not see us there, but we could reach and touch the trees. In front of the patch of trees were some posts dug into the ground, just large enough to hide behind, to the chagrin of some recess monitors. We would capture ladybugs on the oak leaves and put them in sandwich bags with holes poked into them. Kids would store these ladybugs in their backpacks and show them to friends after school. I collected acorns and made them my "children." We would play stick tag, throwing sticks to tag each other. Eventually that game got banned, though I don't remember anybody getting hurt. We kids had rules in place to avoid that. We had this gigantic swing set; it took me a while to build the confidence to take the full swing. We would jump from the seat of the swing and see how far away we could land, drawing a line in the gravel each time. We played troll, where we would run across a wobbly bridge while one kid tried to lightly grab our legs. We had a tire swing; several of us would lay down on it and another kid or two would swin us around as fast as they could. We performed all kinds of stunts on the monkey bars; some kids did fall down and break their arms, so recess monitors started to tell us to only climb on the bottom of the bars. There was a tension between students and recess monitors; sometimes they were okay with these thinfs and sometimes not. This was 1st and 2nd grade.
Then 3rd grade arrived and we were expected to do homework. I was so bad at doing my homework that I had to sit on the bleachers at recess until my work was done. I was always sleep deprived, so it took a long time to finish. I didn't get a whole lot of recess that year. My best friend, who got into the Smart class and was designated as Gifted and Talented, started hanging out with her new friends from GT, and they collectively shunned me. I started to internalize the idea that I was dumb. I developed germaphobia and started putting hand sanitizer all over every surface and all over my hands until they became cracked and bloody. I started having bad stomach aches and felt like I was dying. I hadn't realized until now that all of this started happening in 3rd grade. What an awful year!
Life did get better, though! I will always cherish those early recess memories and that magical place where the trees met the playground. Now they are only a memory; not 3 years after I graduated 5th grade, they chopped down the trees and updated the playground with a rubber mat surface.
In the mid 1960s, we had 90 minutes for lunch and recess. We had to eat the school lunch, but it was pretty good. Recess was outside usually, completely unsupervised. I usually swung on swings, singing. If it rained I think we were in the gym, and in that case teachers were present. This was in Nashville TN.
In 1962-63 we lived in Leeds, England. I walked home for lunch. I think the lunch break was about 90 minutes or more.
I was in primary school in Queensland, Australia from 1988 onwards. We had 20 mins for morning tea and 45 minutes for lunch. We also got to play before school if we came early.
We had a very large playground with wooden climbing equipment, and a small forested area. The older kids got the whole oval, a big hillside with play equipment and the asphalt sport courts. It was hot so we stuck to the shade mostly. We were also allowed to spend lunch in the library which I did somewhat often.
I spent my time collecting rocks, swinging on the bars and building cubbies. I spent a lot of time pretending very detailed worlds in that little forest. It really was idyllic.
I remember one teacher for the entire playground of 300 kids, and they were always a benign or sometimes helpful presence, only intervening when they saw a kid really needing help or in case of injury, or if kids went off into the super dangerous out-of-bounds areas (storm water drains usually). I'm really glad they were there, I always felt the correct kind of adult presence. I remember two major injuries - one girl broke her wrist falling off the bars doing a flip and another kid broke her ankle playing netball and we didn't find out until later cause her mum made her walk it off. We all had a lot of fun, but I do remember being scared of the bigger rougher kids.
Early 1990s in elementary school in Canada, during the winters THE ENTIRE SCHOOL would pull on their boots and coats, drag their sleds outside and sled down a hill next to the school. I do not recall any teachers anywhere nearby the sledding hill.
During lunch, I would simply skip out the doors to the school and race home as fast as I could for a hot lunch made by my mother. Imagine that today, kids just walking out of school to go home for lunch! I had no idea just how amazing that was.
In a small town in Georgia (country, not the state) in the mid 90ies, we only had 5 minute breaks and one 10 or 15 minute break at noon. We didn't have lunch at school. We played outside, unsupervised, mostly dodgeball.
What a great discussion topic and question! I enjoyed reading about your recess and lunch time in the 50's. I was a child of the 80's and grew up in northern Louisiana. I recall having two recesses a day-one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We could have a snack with us during one of the recesses. We had a regular playground with a jungle gym and slides and probably swings. I can remember one kid (not in my class) falling and breaking their arm. Our lunch was in the cafeteria but I don't recall many lunch ladies monitoring us. Our teachers monitored recess but I don't recall them ever having to break up any fights/arguments or being involved much at all. Recess could be taken away for misbehavior and you had to sit against a wall and watch your friends have fun. (A consequence that I regretfully used when I was also an elementary school teacher. Forgive me, my former students!) I do remember once when a pair of 5th graders attempted to get married on the playground during recess. A teacher quickly ran down to break up that wedding!
I was in elementary school from 2006-2011. Recess was 15 minutes after lunch in a playground behind the school. An aide stood near the door and watched over us. Most of the children preferred to climb on the playground structures or play kickball; I was a quiet and eccentric kid and preferred to walk on the short wooden beam that kept the pebbles inside the playground as if it were a balance beam.
My strongest specific memory of recess is being coerced by some of the boys into hiding behind a bench and kissing a boy I'd claimed to "like-like" out of social pressure to have a crush on someone, then being scolded by the aide that I wasn't old enough for that. I'd already felt an indescribable "dirty," almost depressed emotion after the unwanted kiss, and the aide's reaction made me feel deeply ashamed and misunderstood. In hindsight, she must have meant well, only intending to warn me not to do things like that until I was older for my own good.
I was born in 1955, and in the '60s I remember recess three times a day: 15 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes after lunch, and 15 minutes around 2:00. School ended at 3:00. We had swing sets, monkey bars, seesaws, 4-square and hopscotch grids. There was a playing field for kickball, and there were woods to play in as well. Wild strawberries grew along the edge of the field. There were teachers as recess monitors, but we pretty much ignored them until it was time to line up and go inside. When it rained, we either stayed in the classroom (I played tic-tac-toe with a boy I only interacted with for that game) or we went to the gym to play crab soccer. In junior high and senior high recess disappeared, but the period for lunch was a full class period--47 minutes-- and we'd go outside once we finished eating.
We had nearly an acre of land to run around on, playing kiss or kill (always kill), monkey bars to do death drops, plus the tarmac area for ball play (4-6 grade). Somehow we knew we weren’t allowed into the woods behind, I guess 🤷♀️ Ah, the 70s…
I don't really have much recollection about kindergarten and recess. It was only a half day. I went to school in Meriden Connecticut. This was in 1958. In first grade, at Saint Rose's school, also in Meriden Connecticut I have one very powerful memory from the very last day of school in first grade. On that day, one of my neighbors who was four years older than I, was was organizing a round of boxing matches set up for each grade before school started. He asked me to represent our first grade class and I did it against a good friend of mine named, Keith. So that morning, as soon as I got to the playground, which had a line down the middle and divided the boys from the girls, my friend and neighbor, put boxing gloves on me and on my friend Keith, and we boxed. I beat him rather soundly, but I didn't realize that he really couldn't defend himself as his gloves were not tied on tightly.. With all the cheering and hollering, I just kept on swinging. But then, one of the nuns showed up and Keith and I were taken to the office of mother superior. Shortly thereafter she can you pass a very emotional tongue lashing and then sent us off for our final day of school. In second grade, I had an angel of a nun for a teacher. And often times, during recess we played aluminum foil baseball. The game involves taking the aluminum foil that was used back then to wrap everyone's lunch sandwiches and folding them into a baseball that you could throw and hit. Sister regularly joined our games. We also o played a game with some people being in prison and other people trying to free them from prison. It involved a great deal of wrestling. For third and fourth grade, I think we generally stuck to that routine. We also used to flip baseball cards. A form of gambling, I guess, in that game, you and your opponent held a baseball card and then made it spin and land on the ground. One person won the other person's cards depending on whether or not they matched or didn't match after being flipped. And also, in fifth grade I can remember that on snowy days we played tackle tag, which is just like the normal game of tag except you had to tackle people and knock them off their feet onto the concrete surface, which was generally softened somewhat by snow, the snow being the occasion for having such a contest. In sixth grade, I moved to Norwood Massachusetts and in our recess sessions we often played football or baseball. If we played football, we often had one of the sixth grade teachers, both of whom were men, served as the quarterback for both teams, as this seemed most fair. There was also a nice baseball field nearby where we would play for the length of the entire recess. And these games were all pretty much segregated by grade level. So I moved to Norwood in sixth grade, and most of the activities I was involved with during recess involved only six graders, always males. But not as strictly segregated as in Saint Rose's playground which had a distinct white line dividing the boys half from the girls half.
I was in grade school from starting in 1988 and recess was awesome! We played King of the mountain on big mounds of snow, and had one of those trendy wooden playgrounds that were all the rage in the 80s and 90s. Weather was never a problem, and we were in New Hampshire! Kids would bring all of their winter weather to school change into it before recess, and then change back afterwards. Recess was never something that was taken away from us as a punishment and lasted way longer than my kids' recess ever did when they were in school (we homeschool now). I also recall the teachers not being overly protective either. We just got to play freely.
I started kindergarten in 2000, rural northeastern NC. I do not ever recall being allowed outside at lunch time, it was only 20-30 mins long though. In elementary school, we had recess which was about 20-30 mins long. I remember more time in the younger grades but not a lot.
There were what would not be called dangerous playgrounds, we played tag, I do believe we had to stay within eyesight of the recess attendant but it was huge, multiple playground structures, sand, black tops, open space and then there was a huge field beyond that, but I do believe it was off limits.
1985 in San Mateo California. I was 7 and I played kickball and we would pretend to get married 😂. A lot of chasing boys and hanging with my best friend.
I was a kid in Minnesota in the 70s. We had an hour of recess every day, even when the temps were well below zero. There were two playground aides who would occasionally blow their whistle and yell at the rowdiest kids, but mostly we were totally free to range around and do whatever we wanted.
Besides the usual tag, jump rope, and playing on the playground equipment, we girls would play Four Square, where we’d stand in a grid. Someone would name a category (say, “horses,” or “dog breeds” or “tv shows”), and we would bounce the ball to each other. As you caught the ball, you said a name from the category. If you couldn’t think of a name, you were out. The game continued until there was one girl standing, and she got to announce the next category.
I also remember the occasional skinned knees and banged heads (I once knocked myself out running through a jungle gym and trying not to get tagged by the Pickle in the Middle). These minor injuries were a totally normal part of life and no big deal—and certainly not so bad as to justify a litany of safety rules!
I was born in 85 and went to school in NC near the capital. We never had any completely unsupervised time at lunch or recess in elementary school. I believe we were expected to stay in the lunchroom during lunch. During outside recess our play was supervised from a distance, but it was undirected and we played behind trees and other places that might not be allowed today due to concerns of sexual abuse. Gym time was also memorable for me--I believe that was a separate class, and that it would rotate between activities like dodge ball, and active drama activities.
My lunch hour in the 60/70’s was actually “lunch hour and a half”….I walked home for lunch with my neighbourhood friend often exploring along the route home and back. Our recess breaks at school often involved a self organized soccer tournament …. I remember it being a fairly complex schedule of teams ( all with NHL team names living in Canada)…no adults were involved from my perception….results and stats were tabulated daily …..we couldn’t wait to play! We also traded hockey cards with older and younger kids learning some tough lessons about salesmanship along the way….we also gambled away our marble collections, wrestled staging many pretend fights, played variations on “dodgeball”, climbed everything etc etc….good times!
Just wanted to point out all the blacktop makes the school more like a freeway than a garden.
I attended primary school in England in the late 90s. We had 20 minute morning recess and around an hour for lunch. Younger kids (4-7 year olds) had an additional 15 minute afternoon recess. I remember being ten years old and hearing the younger kids out playing during their afternoon recess and deeply wishing I still had the same freedom!
I never attended a school with a cool playground. That was in the future or past, I guess. But there were always swings (from which we liked to jump at the high point; and which we never ceased believing that we had once seen someone, or perhaps ourselves, go "all the way over") and rings and a bar on chains you could flip over; and at one school a ready-painted 4-square which we used avidly (I can particularly recollect calling "Tall Texan!" among other things - I'm fascinated with the way these things persist, like girls doing "Bobo Skeewottentotten" with their hands); there was often a jump rope I guess supplied by the school, and girls particularly loved to skip, going in and out - sometimes with two going at a time. We liked to draw an elaborate hopscotch layout more so than actually playing it, but we did that too. There was tetherball, surprisingly engaging; and perhaps a seesaw, which in any case managed to combine pleasure with the possibility of a jarring drop. If I could see that space with adult eyes, I would probably be nonplussed - but kids can do a lot with a little. My mother's generation played marbles, and jacks - but we never did and when she tried to show me as an adult that proved to be a skill you have to learn when small.
A merry go round (what we called the thing that spun round as you pushed it, running, then jumped on) was the one thing that occasionally scared me, if a bigger kid came along, but I loved it all the same. I don't think my school had anything that fun, though.
I didn't pay that much attention to what the boys played. Basketball probably. I wasn't good at that, but did enjoy playing "Around the World" with other girls, shooting granny style, sadly. Everyone played tag, and I remember girls saw it as a sort of proxy flirtation, as to who was sweet on whom, while I'm not sure the boys particularly did. But no one was ever sweet on me, so I just enjoyed the running (and freezing, or shouting the name of a TV show which we called "TV tag" but I can't remember how that worked).
We played red light, green light and tug-of-war and red rover. The teacher often organized the latter which would now probably provoke a lawsuit.
I particularly asked for a rope for Christmas so that we could play tug-of-war at home on the street, where we played the school games like four square, where the concrete of the street was neatly divided into a cross. And others, a game we called bombs away, where someone throws up a ball, everyone runs, the designated person catches it - and then gets to take 3 steps and peg the hell out of someone, who's now it.
(The popular variant in my kid's day involved a wall and a ball and was called "Spread Eagle" or wallball, I think.)
A driveway with a gate was useful for any sort of back and forth proto-volleyball-type game.
Autumn brought out a sudden desire to rake, for obvious reasons, in 70s kids who were otherwise very lazy.
We played "Tin Can Alley" and two-below (football) and more "pegging", this time on bikes as we rode past, and still more pegging, of cars (and running, especially if kumquats were involved); in fact, many games involved first establishing "pegging - or no pegging" allowed? And man-in-the-middle with a frisbee, and hotbox, a base-running game. So much hotbox: but in addition to baseball gloves you need two trees the right distance apart. Statues. Colored Eggs, a wonderful game. Kickball and "baseball" running full tilt into a lamppost as first base, which the homeowner probably loved. You couldn't run past first; you'd leave yourself open to pegging ;-).
We had for a couple years a passion for croquet.
When we were old enough to be out in the dark, we played ghost in the graveyard or sardines in all the nooks and crannies of our suburban street. There was another game called midnight or 12 o clock but I can't remember how it went. There was no better feeling than playing spooky games in a safe neighborhood, in the dark.
We lived in north Pennsylvania in the winter of 1976-77 when the snow storms were terrible. For recess when I was in 5th grade, we bundled up twice a day in preparation for the freezing cold. We would run up a little hill and slide down to the playground that was iced over and go back up the hill again. Fast forward to 2004-2009 when my son was in elementary school in south Florida: it was always TOO HOT, or TOO COLD, or TOO RAINY for them to go out for recess.
Mid 80s to early 90s Catholic school in Phoenix.
I believe we had two short 15 minute recesses and a long lunch. We ate quickly outside in the Ramada to get out to play.
There was quite a large grass yard with playground equipment that would be nuclear in the Phoenix heat. I recall making sure my uniform skirt covered the parts of me that touched any equipment. We also had a blacktop that we could literally pull melty pieces up from when it was hot enough. There was a brick wall separating the grass from the neighborhood behind it.
I am sure we had rules (it was Catholic school after all), but I honestly can’t recall any, so they must have not been too restrictive. We ran around, played basketball, kickball, dodgeball, tag. Lots of jump rope games, jumping off swings, and gymnastics in the grass.
We had teachers supervising but never closely. I recall them sitting on a bench and not moving or really watching. I’d have to go to them when injured. Got accidentally kicked in the lip pretty badly that required 34 stitches. Broke my arm on the bars doing a “death drop.” No adult ever noticed until I went to them.
As we got older there was a lot of cattiness amongst the girls. No one ever regulated it or probably even knew.
We did have to line up by girls and boys to go inside.
I went to a Catholic grammar school in Queens, NY. We had an hour lunch/recess break as well. Most of us walked home for lunch, ate quickly (maybe while watching Winky Dink on TV), then walked back to school. Our recess area was blacktop only. No basketball hoops, no equipment but what we brought with us. We would play clapping games, hand ball, or jump rope. I suppose there were chasing games as well. Occasionally a fight would break out among the boys, and that is when a nun or two would come outside to intervene. Otherwise, we saw no adults until the bell rang for us to line up and re-enter the building. This was in the late 60's and early 70's.
Let’s see. I grew up in a farm town in Utah in the 90s. I remember having a morning recess and a lunch/play time, possibly two recesses in the earlier years, but I can’t be sure. I think the time was 20-30 minutes for recess, and 30 minutes for lunch recess. Everyone stayed on campus for lunch. I remember having one adult recess attendant on the playground, basically just a lifeguard that would be there in case there was an emergency, but mostly didn’t get involved. We played on the monkey bars, zip line, super wide metal slide that can slide many kids at once and got very hot when sunny. My girl friends and I would just wander around the edges and talk or sit under a tree picking grass to make into little bird nests as we talked. We also had options of 4square, basketball, hop scotch, and jump ropes. One day (4th grade-10yr old)I was inspired to lead the kids from the whole grade in a game of red rover. That game got broken up by the adults right away. That was deflating. I remember we were punished for being too loud in the lunch room (so echoey in there) and had to sit in the gym for recess and read. In 5th and 6th grade, my girlfriends and I practiced cheerleading during recess doing stunting, tumbling, and acrobatics. We were mostly left to our own devices, but there was a recess lady or two that tried to stop us because it made her nervous. There was often a game of dodge ball happening in the gym on winter days and a ball game in the field on warmer days. In winter we would bundle up and go out to play in the snow making snow angels or throwing snowballs or whatever.