Outdoor recess for k-6 and education

We have been asked to share our research with a community school district in Michigan and we want to hear your response. Why is recess important? What is the importance of outdoor recess vs. indoor recess? How often should recess take place for K-6. Please share your research, links, and comments. Your response could make the difference. - from the Michigan No Child Left Inside Coalition facebook page (Posted by The Michigan No Child Left Inside Coalition page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michigan-No-Child-Left-Inside-Coalition/132659406774553 )

A brief anecdote about outdoor play from a different angle:  I used to play street hockey with friends in the summer.  I spoke with a hockey player earlier this autumn who realized that kids no longer play outdoor sports on his street either.  One of my neighborhood friends affirmed a similar observation.  Recess outdoors is important to me because it demonstrates that people can have fun without sophisticated facilities.  One challenge for working with an open area comes from making the rules for stimulating and fun low-resource intangible games (tag, etc.) accessible to generations whom may no longer be familiar with them.  While it's possible to have fun indoors too, I think people are inclined to rely on toys or games that don't beneficially integrate other aspects of a person's growth (especially the kinesthetic/physical).

The indoors, as a controlled environment, denies people the opportunity to discover subtle realities of their environment.  In turn, it can reduce a one's capacity to develop a better sense of the place they live in, and can deny them the opportunity to meaningfully engage with the world around them via self-motivated inquiry.  An authentic curiosity and sense of reverence for an experience ignited from of one's own volition--the "sense of wonder" as Rachel Carson would coin it--is important for opening the door to deeper learning.  Students in cities might notice something about their neighborhoods that most adults would not have.  Though the neighborhood tire clean-up case study from a place like the STARR Academy in Detroit wasn't necessarily motivated by recess, it's a good example of people developing their sense of place and an empowering example of people recognizing their capacity for efficate action in their local environments.  I also believe outdoor play is important for adults, but that's for a slightly different story.

This is a similar challenge for people interested in the No Child Left Inside movement who have an environmental education/nature background:  how can we help people empower themselves to develop a focused sense of what can be done amid almost overwhelming choices?  An empty yard or an empty field/vacant lot may look the same to the casual observer.

Natural history and systemic processes--the interesting stuff that many people eventually do find fascinating--behind the things we might take for granted are frequently unknown and intangible.  Yet  developing basic literacy for finding resources or recognizing natural phenomena also can inspire and impel a person (any age, not just k-6) to engage and appreciate whatever it is they find around them.  Perhaps students with some education in geology would actually want to examine the cement near the school for rocks they can identify?  Likewise, those who have some understanding of local flora and principles of ecology might be excited about seeing whatever weeds are growing up on the school grounds.  Animals (including insects) probably would have been a better example, but I think I've demonstrated the idea.  To quote Baba Dioum: "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."  I suspect fleshing out connections in education that make any outdoor experience coherent will be an important step.