Brain Freeze To Brain Squeeze: A Teachers' Guide To Thawing Students' Post-Holiday Energy Blues
Who has not experienced the return to school blues. Are your students slow to get back in the routine after the holidays. Are they
dragging by recess time? Do some of them start to ask, “Is it time to go home yet?” If you have answered yes to one or all of these
questions welcome to the return to school blues. What your students do not know is that you probably are feeling the same way.
You are feeling slow to get back into the routine of things. Thank goodness for caffeine. You are dragging by recess time. Thank
goodness you can catch a quick nap when your students are outside at recess or during specials. And yes, you want to go home
too. You want to climb back in your warm bed and not think about the millions of things you need to do, but you cannot do that.
Stick around to learn more about a teachers’ guide to thawing students’ post-holiday energy blues and three tips you can use
right now.
1. Do Brain Breaks
Infusing brain breaks have been known to kickstart students’ energy. Brain breaks have been shown to give students the little
movement their body needs to restart their engine. When you return to school, add more brain breaks into day because your
students need them after returning to the daily structure of the classroom. Brain breaks activities balance the workload. Because
brain breaks have become so popular there are so many to choose from. You can select vigorous brain breaks or calming brain
breaks depending on your students’ interest, needed, or the results you want to achieve.
2. Play Brain Games
“Brain activities should take place before fatigue, boredom, distraction, and inattention set in” (Willis, 2016, p. 2).
Students can shake their brain awake and get it powered up by engaging in brain games. These attention grabbing games will
not only cut the brain drain but provide students with an opportunity to activate their zone of genius. What I love about brain
games is that when your students play them; there is a timer involved. Your students will play the game and then the game is over.
Your students get a quick break and then go back to the learning. “Depending on students’ ages and focus development, brain
break frequency will vary. As a general rule, concentrated study of 10 to 15 minutes for elementary school and 20 to 30
minutes for middle and high school students calls for a three- to five-minute break” (Willis, 2016, p. 3). Brain games are
fun! They will allow your students to work individually or as a team. There is little to no planning involved other than to select a
game and decide how your students will play it.
3. Provide Dance Breaks
Raise your hand if you love a good dance challenge? With the rise in YouTube video shorts and TikTok dance challenges, your
students will have a blast showing off their dance skills to one another. An interactive, turbocharged dance break has so many
benefits. In addition to giving your students an opportunity to bust a move, your students can collaborate and make moves up with
a partner, a group, or team.
Final Thoughts
The most important thing is to get your students up and moving so they are able to get through the school day with a quick reset
and infusion of energy. These breaks will help your students balance the workload. The best thing about these brain boosting
activities like brain breaks, brain games, and dance breaks are that they also provide structure. Students taking a brain break,
participating in a brain game, or cutting a rug during a dance break require them to be able to follow instructions to achieve the
desired outcome of reduce the brain drain after surviving the post-holiday zombie apocalypse. If you have not done so, be sure to
introduce a few of these activities into your daily routine and watch your students begin to enjoy engaging in brain-tastic
experiences to revive your students’ energy.
Here Are Three Tips To Keep In Mind:
· Keep the breaks time short and sweet.
· Let students have a say in their break.
· Mix up your breaks with a combination of the three activities: brain breaks, brain games, and dance breaks