Recess beckons well before it actually arrives. Its allure can be heard in children’s lunchtime conversations as they discuss imaginary roles, plans, alliances and teams with an appetite as hungry for play and its unbounded possibility as for food. For some children, recess provides the most important reason to come to school.

Although watched over by the protective, though generally unobtrusive, gaze of supervising teachers, children at recess interact with their environments and with each other almost completely as they choose—a freedom denied them at all other times while at school—and increasingly also in their homes and neighborhoods.
The adult preference for more organized and purposeful activity has always been at odds with children’s greater tolerance for chaos and flexibility and their need to exercise their own decision-making powers. The rise of institutionalized, adult-dominated after-school programs, the over-scheduling of children’s free time and the increasing pressure on children to adopt the work ethic as (or even before) they begin elementary school have emerged as major social problems.

Free play and “doing well at school” have somehow become mutually exclusive in the minds of many adults, and this perception has now begun to transform one of the last vestiges of free choice in every child’s day—recess.

Once accepted universally as a vital diversion from the adult-directed rhythms of the classroom, recess has come under increasing scrutiny over the past couple of decades. In its traditional form, recess is now seen by many educators as either leaving children vulnerable to aggression and anti-social behavior, or as an inconvenient interruption to the academics on which students will be tested and their teachers judged.

In response, many districts across the United States have reduced or eliminated recess, or replaced it with more structured activities. For many children, recess is no longer the festive occasion, with its multiplicity of elements, ages, sexes, and forms of play that it has traditionally been.

One recent popular guide for schools which “despite their best efforts, continue to be plagued by fights, arguments, and unmotivated students on their playground”, declared that “recess should be a productive learning time where everyone has a purpose and works to fulfill that purpose. In essence it’s still free time, but free time that must be used to accomplish specific outcomes”.
“Children on the playground who perceive that recess is their free time often push the same limits of irresponsible behavior, acting as though recess is a time for them to do what they want. Unfortunately, this type of ‘ego-centric’ attitude causes problems for teachers and playground supervisors….When students perceive recess as little more than a free-for-all, it’s very difficult to get them to act responsibly,” stated the guide.

While the impulse to prepare the recess environment in some way is positive, this concept of play leaves no room for self-discovery and free play because [it takes the view that] children cannot be trusted with free choice.

As a lower elementary teacher at Lexington Montessori School in Lexington, Massachusetts from 1994 through 2002, I witnessed for eight years the development of an extraordinary child-centered and spontaneous world of recess play. As children entered the elementary program at LMS, they were initiated into a culture of fort building by their peers. The forts, built entirely from sticks, leaves and found objects from the surrounding woods, were the site of considerable experimentation with different forms and rules of social organization and various styles of construction.

By the spring of 2000, the elementary program at LMS had grown to a population of 104 students. Almost 60% of these children were involved in 11 forts by the spring of 2000, with somewhat greater interest shown by lower elementary students than upper elementary students, and with more involvement among girls than boys.

Fort play was tolerated by LMS teachers for the most part with a mixture of fascination, confusion and frustration. Fort conflicts and issues requiring mediation and arbitration by teachers seemed to fill staff meetings and dominate classroom discussions. One teacher recalled a period in the mid-1990s “where recess was one long stream of crying children saying ‘Someone stole my stick!’” At one point the faculty came very close to banning forts altogether, but most understood how important fort culture was to the children who engaged in it, and so were prepared to allow it even while secretly wishing it would disappear. 

Despite the ambivalence of many teachers, the students I interviewed were clear about the benefits of fort play. Fort play was unpredictable, immediate, exciting and fun. Many continued this form of play through sixth grade as their main recess activity, citing multiple reasons for their interest.

In the early years of fort culture at LMS, rules were not explicitly discussed among students, and many former students believed that there were no commonly accepted rules of fort play—aside from the general school rules that teachers imposed. Those in leadership positions sometimes saw a benefit in the lack of common rules of fort play and the lack of direct teacher involvement. Many leaders hinted at the importance of not getting caught stealing sticks and of limiting conflict so that teachers would not be called to arbitrate.

However, when asked to describe the worst thing about playing in forts, most children complained about the seemingly lawless social dynamics of fort play. Arguments within and between forts over property or rank, stick stealing, exclusion, being “fired” or “bossed around” by leaders who expected younger or newer fort members to spend recess gathering sticks or sweeping out the fort, and fort “wars”—these were all cited by both girls and boys as the most unpleasant aspects of fort play.

As the competitive nature of many forts escalated already existing tensions both on and off the recess field, parents and teachers were becoming increasingly concerned and frustrated. By 1994 the new interim Head of School had begun facilitating weekly lunchtime community meetings for any interested students on issues of their choosing. These voluntary meetings soon came to be dominated by fort disputes, and rules decided at community meetings were supposed to be binding on all elementary students. However these meetings were generally avoided by those fort leaders whose competitive interests were often driving the conflicts. Several scoffed at what they perhaps saw as attempts by less powerful children to use these teacher-sanctioned meetings to challenge their authority.

In December 1995, after many long, voluntary community meetings, The Ultimate, Absolute Fort Rules were agreed upon by those children who attended, and then presented to the rest of the community. These rules governed ownership and boundary rights, stick trading rights, and under what circumstances members could be “fired.” Conditions and exceptions, however, left plenty of room for maneuver by distorting and misrepresenting the intentions of others. Although negotiated by students themselves with facilitation and sanction by the Head of School, all former students surveyed unanimously reported feeling that these rules were subtle impositions by teachers that did not help their situation.

Although it held the promise of making life easier on the recess field, the formal regulation of fort play was actively or passively resisted by most children because it reduced the individual control they exercised over their play.

Perhaps the most lasting effect of these community-wide discussions, however, was an emerging awareness among students that there were different points of view to be heard and that the rules of fort play were not natural law but were in fact open for negotiation. By the fall of 2000, fort membership was becoming increasingly fluid, with larger numbers of children involved in more than one fort simultaneously. The structure of forts also showed greater diversity in many respects, including race, class, gender and inter-classroom membership. Trade in found natural objects had also become more important, with a currency emerging among various groups.

One group had even started offering their fort “condo” for rent! Open clashes between forts settled down as children realized tha…

But at one school in Massachusetts, recess meant just one thing for many children: time to work and play on their forts.
I was a lower elementary teacher at Lexington Montessori School from 1994 through 2002, and for 8 years I witnessed first-hand the development of an extraordinary child-centered and spontaneous world of recess play. As children entered the elementary program at the school, they were initiated into a culture of fort building by their peers. The forts, built entirely from sticks, leaves and found objects from the surrounding woods, were the site of considerable experimentation with different forms and rules of social organization and various styles of construction.

They were also the vehicle for much of the conflict which occurred at the school. Children negotiated and clashed over ownership of land and resources, and argued about the rules and roles of fort play and about whether the rights of those already identified with a structure outweighed the rights of outsiders to be included. In doing so, they developed and influenced each other’s reasoning about such moral principles as benevolence, justice and reciprocity.

Fort play was unpredictable, immediate, exciting and fun, a brief window of opportunity among hours of mostly adult-inspired activities and expectations in which these children were free to manage their own lives and interact with each other on their own terms.

As Lorena, 15, a student at LMS from 1991 to 1996 put it:

“I liked being in a fort because it gave me a sense of belonging to a small family, and it also gave me a purpose; namely, expanding and taking care of the fort.… Fort play was a way for me to be comfortable expressing opinions and leading other children at a time when I was very hesitant to do either in front of adults. I think this made me a stronger person today.”

The building of forts at LMS was made possible by its location adjoining a three-acre, undulating woodland property. But for many adults it was the open field created by the school was seen as the optimal play area for children at recess because it offered the opportunity for cooperative and competitive sports and games, and for easy supervision of large numbers of children.

From the moment the field was available to the children, however, many of them were drawn away from its large open spaces and the organized games and into the woods still surrounding it on all sides. By all accounts, fort play began almost immediately with sticks piled up from the clearing process—despite the best intentions of those who had sought to plan the children’s free play activities.

The forts were constructed either as open spaces with boundaries marked out with stones or sticks or as enclosed structures that were generally limited by the lack of binding materials to “teepee,” lean-to,” and “pile fort” designs. The open forts tended to be used more intensively after construction as a locus for social gatherings or for the practice of domestic skills like sweeping or making “food” .

For enclosed huts—usually, though not always, constructed by boys—the act of building itself was often the important thing. Once these structures were complete, there was often little room and few sticks for further expansion, which meant that the only way to keep the excitement of construction alive was to demolish and rebuild either in the same place or in a new location.

All the students I spoke to were clear about the benefits of fort play. Some reported being drawn to fort play for the excitement of building and maintaining a structure they felt was their own. Carlotta and Zeke* began their first fort as a structure to serve as the Warner Tower in a game based on the television cartoon Animaniacs, but soon discovered that they were having more fun building the fort than imitating the characters. Alfie said that he and his friends also found the woods “more interesting than the barren field”. He recounted how they used the fallen branches and other found forest detritus to construct their fort…

...“because it just seemed like the right thing to do… It was as if we built the structure itself because we had nothing better to do, but the reality is that we did: We had a whole field at our disposal with balls and Frisbees and cones, but for some reason building a fort seemed like a more productive use of our time.”

Our generation of young people will inherent many of our most chronic and intractable social problems, as well as some precipitous environmental crises. Avoiding catastrophe will require flexible, inclusive and highly imaginative thinking on their part. But the opportunities available to today’s young to experiment with their own decision-making powers in free play with one another, and to interact positively with the natural environment, are rapidly shrinking. For many students at LMS recess provided not only some of their most cherished memories of life at the school—it may also have provided some of their most valuable lessons.

This post is an edited extract from Mark Powell’s thesis “The Hidden Curriculum of Recess” in which he writes in detail about the fort play phenomenon he studied while at LMS. He will return to this subject in future posts looking at, among other things, the ambivalence of some teachers to fort play, the rules devised by the children around fort play, and the many reasons given by those children for why they loved creating and playing in forts. *All names used are pseudonyms.

But at one school in Massachusetts, recess meant just one thing for many children: time to work and play on their forts.
I was a lower elementary teacher at Lexington Montessori School from 1994 through 2002, and for 8 years I witnessed first-hand the development of an extraordinary child-centered and spontaneous world of recess play. As children entered the elementary program at the school, they were initiated into a culture of fort building by their peers. The forts, built entirely from sticks, leaves and found objects from the surrounding woods, were the site of considerable experimentation with different forms and rules of social organization and various styles of construction.

They were also the vehicle for much of the conflict which occurred at the school. Children negotiated and clashed over ownership of land and resources, and argued about the rules and roles of fort play and about whether the rights of those already identified with a structure outweighed the rights of outsiders to be included. In doing so, they developed and influenced each other’s reasoning about such moral principles as benevolence, justice and reciprocity.

Fort play was unpredictable, immediate, exciting and fun, a brief window of opportunity among hours of mostly adult-inspired activities and expectations in which these children were free to manage their own lives and interact with each other on their own terms.

As Lorena, 15, a student at LMS from 1991 to 1996 put it:

“I liked being in a fort because it gave me a sense of belonging to a small family, and it also gave me a purpose; namely, expanding and taking care of the fort.… Fort play was a way for me to be comfortable expressing opinions and leading other children at a time when I was very hesitant to do either in front of adults. I think this made me a stronger person today.”

The building of forts at LMS was made possible by its location adjoining a three-acre, undulating woodland property. But for many adults it was the open field created by the school was seen as the optimal play area for children at recess because it offered the opportunity for cooperative and competitive sports and games, and for easy supervision of large numbers of children.

From the moment the field was available to the children, however, many of them were drawn away from its large open spaces and the organized games and into the woods still surrounding it on all sides. By all accounts, fort play began almost immediately with sticks piled up from the clearing process—despite the best intentions of those who had sought to plan the children’s free play activities.

The forts were constructed either as open spaces with boundaries marked out with stones or sticks or as enclosed structures that were generally limited by the lack of binding materials to “teepee,” lean-to,” and “pile fort” designs. The open forts tended to be used more intensively after construction as a locus for social gatherings or for the practice of domestic skills like sweeping or making “food” .

For enclosed huts—usually, though not always, constructed by boys—the act of building itself was often the important thing. Once these structures were complete, there was often little room and few sticks for further expansion, which meant that the only way to keep the excitement of construction alive was to demolish and rebuild either in the same place or in a new location.

All the students I spoke to were clear about the benefits of fort play. Some reported being drawn to fort play for the excitement of building and maintaining a structure they felt was their own. Carlotta and Zeke* began their first fort as a structure to serve as the Warner Tower in a game based on the television cartoon Animaniacs, but soon discovered that they were having more fun building the fort than imitating the characters. Alfie said that he and his friends also found the woods “more interesting than the barren field”. He recounted how they used the fallen branches and other found forest detritus to construct their fort…

...“because it just seemed like the right thing to do… It was as if we built the structure itself because we had nothing better to do, but the reality is that we did: We had a whole field at our disposal with balls and Frisbees and cones, but for some reason building a fort seemed like a more productive use of our time.”

Our generation of young people will inherent many of our most chronic and intractable social problems, as well as some precipitous environmental crises. Avoiding catastrophe will require flexible, inclusive and highly imaginative thinking on their part. But the opportunities available to today’s young to experiment with their own decision-making powers in free play with one another, and to interact positively with the natural environment, are rapidly shrinking. For many students at LMS recess provided not only some of their most cherished memories of life at the school—it may also have provided some of their most valuable lessons.

This post is an edited extract from Mark Powell’s thesis “The Hidden Curriculum of Recess” in which he writes in detail about the fort play phenomenon he studied while at LMS. He will return to this subject in future posts looking at, among other things, the ambivalence of some teachers to fort play, the rules devised by the children around fort play, and the many reasons given by those children for why they loved creating and playing in forts. *All names used are pseudonyms.

A clutch of them has recently – if a little belatedly – discovered skateboarding. The more proficient among them take advantage of the slight gradient of the street to swish by at great speed. Others hang around discussing brands of boards and trucks or work on perfecting their kick-flips and ollies.

One boy has procured a rail and the other day a group of five kids were all taking turns trying to stay upright while grinding along it. The rail was positioned on the street a couple of yards away from the curb. Given the width of the street and paucity of passing traffic it was far from causing an obstruction.

A man in a BMW drove up. Rather than driving by, he pulled car right up behind the rail and got out of the car. He then demanded to know who the rail belonged to and complained to the boy in question. He said he had asked him before not to play with it in the street. He picked up the rail and proceeded to try to put it into the trunk of his car.  It being a diminutive European vehicle, it would not fit. The rail’s owner reminded the man politely that it wasn’t his to take – that he was in fact stealing – at which point the man raised the rail above his head as though he were about to throw it at something (or someone).
Fortunately the boy’s mother appeared at this point and appeased the situation.

What are we to make of an adult who can’t stand to see children playing in the street? I hasten to say that I would be the first to complain if kids literally took over the street and were a danger to both themselves and drivers. But I am assured by my son and the adults who witnessed this scene that this was not the case.

I am hoping that this one encounter with a crabby joy-kill will prove to be the exception to the rule. For I’d like to think that there are a few places left where children are free to roam—and grind. And I do so want to make it into that league table!

[Photo credit: lawrenceskatepark.com]

A clutch of them has recently – if a little belatedly – discovered skateboarding. The more proficient among them take advantage of the slight gradient of the street to swish by at great speed. Others hang around discussing brands of boards and trucks or work on perfecting their kick-flips and ollies.

One boy has procured a rail and the other day a group of five kids were all taking turns trying to stay upright while grinding along it. The rail was positioned on the street a couple of yards away from the curb. Given the width of the street and paucity of passing traffic it was far from causing an obstruction.

A man in a BMW drove up. Rather than driving by, he pulled car right up behind the rail and got out of the car. He then demanded to know who the rail belonged to and complained to the boy in question. He said he had asked him before not to play with it in the street. He picked up the rail and proceeded to try to put it into the trunk of his car.  It being a diminutive European vehicle, it would not fit. The rail’s owner reminded the man politely that it wasn’t his to take – that he was in fact stealing – at which point the man raised the rail above his head as though he were about to throw it at something (or someone).
Fortunately the boy’s mother appeared at this point and appeased the situation.

What are we to make of an adult who can’t stand to see children playing in the street? I hasten to say that I would be the first to complain if kids literally took over the street and were a danger to both themselves and drivers. But I am assured by my son and the adults who witnessed this scene that this was not the case.

I am hoping that this one encounter with a crabby joy-kill will prove to be the exception to the rule. For I’d like to think that there are a few places left where children are free to roam—and grind. And I do so want to make it into that league table!

[Photo credit: lawrenceskatepark.com]

Children’s museums are one antidote for urban families. Most have plenty of hands-on opportunities and “loose parts” for child-directed play. Parents and caregivers can participate or relax nearby. At Habitot Children’s Museum in downtown Berkeley, our water play area lets children explore floating and sinking objects, use a variety of pumps, and pour water down a stream to make boats, fish and ducks travel along. Children in our pretend grocery store shop for multicultural fruits, vegetables and breads and act out being shoppers, cashiers, and grocery clerks. Children are allowed to use hands-on materials in imaginative ways. For example, when our Rocket Ship exhibit was installed, children regularly shopped in the grocery store area for food supplies for their trips to the moon.

Children’s museums are safe, enclosed spaces where social interactions between children are encouraged and facilitated. While many of our suburban and urban neighborhoods are often empty of children outdoors, children’s museums bring lots of kids together in one space and let them play together.

One of the surprising aspects of children’s museum programming is how adults are encouraged to get involved in their children’s play. At Habitot, we see parents ordering from the pretend cafe menus, and willingly being face painted by their children. While children’s play is good and necessary for its own sake, it is also wonderful for parents and children to spend playful moments together.