Description

USING BREATHING EXERCISES WITH KIDS 

Our breathing exercises for kids will help bring mindfulness, focus and calm into your classroom or home.  This resource includes 15 effective breathing techniques, reinforced with clear illustrations that provide detailed visual support for all learners. Perfect for your trauma informed classroom and calm corner space.

WHY TEACH MINDFUL BREATHING EXERCISES?

Mindful breathing helps us to feel calmer, more focused, and better able to make thoughtful decisions. Moreover, it improves self-control, problem-solving skills, self-awareness, attention, memory, and sleep; all factor that are critical for child development and learning.

Mindful breathing is a great routine educators can implement in their classrooms.  It hardly takes much time, is a quiet activity and can work wonders with transitions.  In other words, it helps to shift chaos energy into peaceful energy.

When we pay attention to our breathing, and “breathe on purpose,” the oxygen that we take in literally sends a message to the brain that everything is okay.  In other words, mindful breathing helps us to move out of a reactive state into a receptive state, which also means we are more ready to learn and can make better decisions in whatever context we find ourselves in.

How many times have we told young people, “Just take a deep breath” without really showing them different ways they can do this?  Our breathing exercises for kids resource is a concrete guide to do such!

IDEAS FOR USE:

• Incorporate into morning meeting and transition routines.
• Use as Mindfulness Brain Breaks
• Use book, poster and/or task cards in your Calm Corner or Take a Break Spot
• Hang 18″X24″ poster up for easy visual reminder
• Kids can wear their favorite breathing exercise on their wrist as a visual cue to help them self-regulate or focus when needed
• Invite students and their families to practice breathing exercises at home…send home copies of the Breathing Exercise Guide and Breathing BINGO Challenge for homework
• Use them yourself….when feeling stressed or overwhelmed (my personal go-to is the Ocean Waves; I use it all the time with my own very loud kids.)

Looking for Distance Learning Ready Breathing Exercises?  Check out:

• Free Breathing Exercise Sample
• Self-Regulation Breaks & Mindfulness Breathing Videos for SEL Distance Learning