While breathing exercises aren’t a blanket coping skill that works for everyone, focusing on your breath and controlling it mindfully is going to help every person if they’re dysregulated. Here are some tools to help structure mindful breathing for your students!
“Mindfulness of the breath helps us have an anchor for the present moment, because our minds are usually running off, worrying about the future, or regretting something that we did in the past,” – Dr. Judson Brewer
Seasonal & Student Interest Mindful Breathing Cards
Use these seasonal/student interest breathing cards to encourage emotional regulation. Students engage in structured breathing exercises through interest and seasonal based images, like pumpkins, basketballs, rainbows, and snowflakes. I love how teachers have the ability to switch out cards based on individual student, group, or classroom interests, and seasonally. This simple change-up can make students more excited to try this simple yet impactful intervention. Novelty can be really powerful!
Mindful Breathing Choice Board Freebie
This breathing choice board is a free, structured tool for students to choose a breathing exercise to try! The power of choice is huge. Giving students the autonomy to decide what mindful breathing exercise they’ll engage with could be the game changer they need to participate. Just having a few varied tools can give students additional buy-in, or the opportunity to try. I like to add Velcro to each square and adhere the choice images on top. This makes the choice board tangible and interactive!
Shape Breathing Mats
These shape breathing mats come in two sizes and tons of shapes. They are perfect for adding to an office or classroom calm corner. Although they come in multiple sizes, don’t let that limit you. I have seen teachers print these mats out poster size to create big tracks for students to move toy cars around, to hang on the wall as a visual invitation for mindful breathing, and more. Printer settings can really change the game, and you can also print things using poster makers (which you may have in your school building) or at a local printing shop!
Because of the way the shapes are designed, students can use dry erase markers or dry erase crayons to trace the shapes, or just their finger. This is a great reason to laminate the mats! Not only does it create longevity, but opens the mats up to multiple uses.
What do you think? These mats go perfectly with read alouds, too. If you’re looking for some high quality picture books to enhance and reinforce your mindfulness time, look no further.
