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.
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.
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.