Does your brain need a break?

Are your students fidgeting during class? Are you tired of losing the attention of the class? 

Instead of getting frustrated and losing valuable teaching time in the classroom give the children a brain break.  A brain break is when we give the brain an opportunity to take a break. 

During this time the children can stand up and get their sillies out! There are many ways to have a brain break.

 You can have the students:

Stand up 

Take a walk outside or inside if the weather is bad

Do jumping jacks

Play Simon says 

Play a game

Do an activity with the lesson 

Sing a song

Recite a poem 

Etc 

There are many different options that you can try with your students. This will save lots of teaching time and it will also help the students better understand the lessons because they will be concentrating more on the lessons at hand. 

Brain breaks can also be known as physical breaks. This is simply because you are giving the children a chance to take a break and do something physical to get let out some energy and to get the sillies out. 

This activity can and should be used for every age student. As a college student I know that during my classes which are 2 hours and 45 minutes long it is very nice to get a 3-5 minute break every once in a while. This makes the time go a little quicker and allows the students to take a few moments to refocus on the lecture. 

Have you used brain breaks? What worked in your classroom?

Camp

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! I know I did. I went up to camp. 

This camp really got me thinking this weekend because of the large amount of children that were there. These children were outside playing from the time they got up until it got too dark to see outside. They were running up and down the streets, riding their bikes, going to all of the different parks, swimming (even though it was only in the upper 60's), walking their pets, and playing baseball or basketball. They were all ACTIVE!! Earlier this month I talked about childhood obesity and how children need to exercise more. Even though every trailer up at this camp has television access these children were outside playing with other children having a wonderful time. 

I think this is a great experience for the children who were there and who will be going there all summer long. It allows them to see just how much fun they can have without electronics.