Rainy Day Recess

As this school year progresses my mind reflects our days in school. The rainy day indoor recess keeps popping into my mind. The rain pelted the windows with enough fog on the inside for each child to write their name. As a gloomy morning goes by, we have a fairly quiet lunch. Lunch concludes with the folding of our place mats and their placement inside our desks. Immediately following we would have our exercise with song.

First, one of the boys who had the ‘charge of the long pole’ for the opening of the upper section of window would get up & open all the top window sections. Don’t ask me why the boys were always put in charge of this, but they were. Each was chosen for the duration of a week. I’m trying to remember if a girl ever opened a window. I don’t remember it happening in all eight years….maybe once. Anyway…back to recess. A boy would open the windows top & bottom to let in the fresh air, rain or not.

We stand and get to have guilt free wiggle time. Arms up, to the sides, twist side to side, bend and reach for the toes. Actually touching the toes was optional, reaching a goal! This policy I still hold fast to today!  Ready, set…the pitch pipe played and we marched in place. Our knees up high and our arms swinging to and fro, we proceeded to sing and parade around the room. A classic song was “Old Folks at Home”. We sang… “Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far from home. That’s where my heart is turning ever, …” I can still hear it in my head today as we phonetically changed the words ‘turning ever’ to ‘turning liver’! Oh brother! I remember coming home from school and performing this at home with a friend (SMF of course!)  We were so proud to sing a new song with the hands and feet moving with the music. My parents had all they could do to stifle a laugh! Could you please repeat those words? A sure sign something was amiss! We still remember it today. God, we were cute!

The rainy day recess was over after the march. Fresh air in our lungs!  Twitching, wiggles and giggles out of our system to resume the afternoon studies at hand. The ‘window-pole-boy-of-the-week’ went about his business due diligently. Windows were shut as we opened our desk for the book needed for our next lesson.

Rain or shine, the day went on as planned.

Cathy

http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/usa/waydownu.htm