We had a dual purpose cafeteria/gym/auditorium. I guess the teachers and the lunch room personal were fast at folding up the tables & putting them back, because they would still manage to have lunch & recess in the gym/cafeteria.

But I was 5, I didn't really pay attention to what magical things that the school did so that we could have recess indoors. I just know we did have it on occasion and we still had fun and ran around a ton. And it was a welcome diversion from the usual recess "game" where the guys would chase girls and then cage them up in the jungle gyms and not let them out once they caught them. And then we'd lead other girls to rescue the caged girls.

We also somehow managed to rehearse for class skits or whatever we did in the same area. Maybe we were a small school, I think there was probably at least 4-6 classes of kids for each grade level with 20-30 kids in a class.

As for carpetting, drapes, drywall & humidity - guess I've always lived in houses of the right ages, 'cause I've never had problems with stuff like that. Basements can sometimes need a dehumidifier though. But I do tend to pay a lot of attention to drainage and I do make sure things dry if they get flooded, even if it requires ripping out drywall. And no, it doesn't have a huge deal to do with the thread, it was just in response to people saying we're all becoming pansy wimps because of our air conditioning, our heating, and the temps are kids are playing in recess at.

Aren't teachers still on at recess? We didn't have separate teachers that watched us at recess, all the 1st or 2nd grade kids would be brought out at once and all the teachers would would watch all of us run over a huge area.