Indoor recess is difficult for students and teachers, both. We need the little break of begin outdoors and students being able to run freely and interact with each other. But as we know, this isn’t always possible due to weather. Indoor recess is a great time to add in geometry and S.T.E.M. based math activities to keep students engaged, using critical thinking, fine motor skills, problem solving, and repeated exposure to geometry. Each activity can allow students full freedom or you can structure it by providing visual cards of what to attempt to create.
Geometry Peg Boards allow students to use their creativity and fine motor skills to create shapes using rubber bands! We all know students love any material that is considered a teacher's material. This is a great time to challenge students to create a certain shape or design. 
One of my students decided to create letters to spell his name in the first image. This is not an idea I would have thought of myself! 
The Geometric Connecting Shapes are very sturdy and come in beautiful colors with a mixture of circles, triangles, squares and octagons. This is a great opportunity for students to become familiar with each shape, its name, and even how many sides the shape contains. 
Who wouldn't love to build images out of Jumbo Tangrams?! Students will love to move and rotate the shapes to create the image on each card. Challenge students to create a sketch of their own image using the shapes included and have a partner build the shape. Can the student build the shape? What went wrong? What should have the "designer" changed? This is a great time to have students work on listening, speaking, and partner work. 
Check out the creativity, imagination, and critical thinking skills my students used while playing with the Wheel Shaped Build Set. 
Dive into Shapes Sea & Build Geometry Set is another hands on way for students to practice building shapes. This set includes 2D and 3D shape cards to help support students to create a shape. Students then are challenged to do another activity such as building a larger shape. Challenge cards also include attribute cards where they discuss the definitions of shapes. For another step, students can learn all about splitting the shapes and even fractions. Or hide the cards and see what students come up with!
