Safe Return to Play & Recess Guidelines

  1. Updates

Playworks is helping schools continue to reimagine recess.

For the past 24 years, Playworks has partnered with elementary schools to help kids stay active and build valuable social-emotional skills through play. As schools prepare re-opening plans, we want to help provide resources for implementing both in-school and virtual play or recess experiences. We developed Recess Guidelines to include options for what recess could look like based on CDC and state guidelines as of July 2020. We know states, districts, and individual schools are developing many plans for reopening, and no matter what variation of online or in-person experiences they offer next school year, Playworks is here to help.

View the Recess Guidelines


COVID-19 is changing the way we move, interact, and play on or off the playground.

As we move toward a new school year that will be impacted by COVID-19, we need to approach play differently. This game guide will help with transitioning to safe and healthy play and is appropriate for adaptations of the school experience for kids. It uses the Playworks SEL Game Guide and The Aspen Institute’s Return to Play Guidelines to break down the return to play into three phases by using a stoplight system to define risk categories. The recommendations below will help you understand how games can safely be integrated as kids, teachers, and school staff go back to school.

Risk categories are assigned relative to other ways of participating in that game or activity, based on the public health and scientific understandings of COVID-19 and how it can be transmitted as of July 2020. Activities are segmented into three types of risk posed both to participants and others.

 

Download the Safe Return to Play Guide

 

For more information about Playworks or any of our programs please contact info@playworks.org.

More Updates


January 12, 2023

Golden State Warriors Community Foundation & Salesforce partner with Playworks ›

We are grateful for our continued partnership with the Warriors Community Foundation and Salesforce during the 2022-2023 school year. With their support, Playworks Northern California has delivered safe and healthy play to over 41,200 elementary school children of promise this year! Check out this inspiring video showcasing our work together:      

A boy and girl holding basketballs on a playground.
A boy and girl holding basketballs on a playground.

November 16, 2022

2021-22 Annual Report ›

We are excited to share with you a look back at everything we accomplished in the 2021-2022 program year. It was a year focused on rebuilding after the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and we are proud to share that we served 41,200 students in the Northern California Region.  We are thankful for your continued…

three people with Playworks shirts
three people with Playworks shirts

July 28, 2022

A year of social and emotional learning ›

“You can’t do SEL, trauma, or equity work without each other,” Jennette Claassen, Head of Evaluation, Playworks. As Playworks continued to progress on our equity journey, we explored a critical question: what are the intersections between play, social and emotional learning, physical activity, and trauma? A working group focused on this question decided, among other…