À la récréation, les enfants restent dans le préau quand il pleut.

À la récréation means at recess or during recess.

French often uses à for times or situations like this:

• à midi = at noon
• à Noël = at Christmas
• à la pause = at break time

Here, À la récréation sets the scene first: it tells you when the action happens.

The comma is natural because this time expression has been moved to the front of the sentence.

In a school context, la récréation means recess, break time, or playtime.

It is often shortened in informal French to la récré, but in this sentence the full word récréation is used.

In French, you usually need an article before a plural noun when talking about a general group.

So:

• les enfants = the children / children in general
• enfants by itself would usually sound incomplete in a normal sentence

French uses articles much more often than English does. English can say Children stay inside when it rains, but French normally says Les enfants...

Because the subject is les enfants, which is third person plural.

The verb rester in the present tense is:

• je reste
• tu restes
• il / elle reste
• nous restons
• vous restez
• ils / elles restent

So:

• les enfants restent = the children stay

Even though reste, restes, and restent can sound the same in speech, the written form must agree with the subject.

Here, rester means to stay or to remain.

So les enfants restent dans le préau means they stay in or remain in that place.

It is different from être, which simply means to be.

• Ils sont dans le préau = They are in the covered playground area.
• Ils restent dans le préau = They stay there / remain there.

So rester suggests that they do not go elsewhere.

Le préau is a specifically French school word. It usually means a covered playground area or roofed shelter in a schoolyard where children can stand or play when the weather is bad.

There is no perfect one-word English equivalent in many cases, so translations may vary depending on context.

Dans le préau means in the covered area / inside the shelter.

French often uses dans when emphasizing being inside a space.

Compare:

• dans le préau = in the covered playground area
• au préau could sometimes sound more like at the préau rather than clearly inside it

So dans le préau is the most natural choice here if the idea is that the children go under the shelter and stay there.

In il pleut, the il does not refer to a person or thing.

French uses an impersonal il with weather verbs:

• il pleut = it is raining / it rains
• il neige = it is snowing
• il fait froid = it is cold

This is like English it rains, where it does not refer to anything specific either.

So in quand il pleut, the il is just a grammatical subject required by the verb.

The present tense in French is often used for habitual actions or general truths, just like in English.

So this sentence means something like:

• At recess, the children stay in the covered area when it rains.

It describes what usually happens, not just what is happening right now.

French does not need a special tense here. The simple present is enough.

Not in this sentence.

• quand means when
• si means if

Here the idea is a regular situation: when it rains, they stay there.

So:

• quand il pleut = when it rains

If you said si il pleut (more commonly written s’il pleut), it would mean if it rains, which suggests a possibility rather than a usual repeated situation.

The basic structure is:

Les enfants restent dans le préau quand il pleut.
= The children stay in the covered area when it rains.

French allows À la récréation to be placed at the beginning to give the time setting first:

À la récréation, les enfants restent dans le préau quand il pleut.

This is very natural and similar to English:

• At recess, the children stay...

So the fronted phrase is just setting the context.

A careful pronunciation would be approximately:

a la ʁekʁeasjɔ̃, le zɑ̃fɑ̃ ʁɛst dɑ̃ lə pʁeo kɑ̃ il plø

A few useful points:

• À la récréation: the ré sound is like ray
• les enfants: there is a liaison, so les enfants sounds like lay-zahn-fahn
• restent: the -ent ending is not pronounced
• préau is pronounced roughly pray-oh
• quand sounds roughly like kahn
• pleut sounds a bit like pluh with a rounded vowel

It is completely normal standard French.

A child or teacher might also say something more informal, such as:

• À la récré, les enfants restent sous le préau quand il pleut.

But the original sentence is natural, correct, and common in educational or textbook contexts.