8 Fun Breathing Exercises for Home & School {Printable}

Breathing has to be the handiest tool we can gift our child for their big emotions toolkit, after all your breath goes everywhere with you! Teaching children to breathe provides them with a simple but effective strategy for slowing down, both mentally and physically, helping them to take notice of how they’re feeling and to relax or calm down in the face of overwhelming emotions.

8 Fun Breathing Exercises for Home & School

Today I am sharing eight simple breathing techniques for use with kids at home or school. These exercises can be used as part of your calm down plan (though it is obviously important to teach children the technique when they are calm so they can then put it to use in the heat of the moment), as a prior-to-sleep relaxation activity or as a brain break exercise to refocus and re-fresh. The techniques have been specifically chosen as they are fun and relatable for children of all ages – they’ll particularly enjoy the Elephant and Bumblebee Breathing ones I am sure!

I have included the exercises on a series of printable cards so that you can print them out and laminate them. Introduce the exercises one at a time, taking time to master each one before introducing the next.

To download and print: Click here to download the cards as a PDF. Download or save the PDF to your own computer. Open the PDF and print. When printing, select “Fit to printable area” (or similar) to ensure the page fits with your printer type and local paper size (these have been created at A4 size). For durability, print onto matte photo paper or lightweight cardstock and laminate. Personal, non commercial use only.

See all of our Big Emotions Resources here…