Breathing Skills
Breathing skills provide visuals for creating steady, controlled breathing patterns, which slows down our stress response and increases focus. These activities can be discreet and done in almost any setting.
Negative emotions activate the body’s stress response, making it difficult to regulate our feelings. Breathing techniques can help control our stress and slow down our bodies. For most children, it is difficult to make positive choices, inhibit impulses, or use coping skills until their stress response decreases.
Pizza Breathing Activity
Deep breathing helps kids calm their bodies down when they have a lot of feelings. Try this fun pizza breathing exercise to help kids learn to take slow, calming breaths.
Take Five Breathing Activity
Another way to learn deep breathing is the take five method. Kids use their hands as a guide, tracing each finger while breathing out. Try this activity with a kid in your life!
Movement Skills
These skills provide playful, quick movements to help students release energy, reset their bodies, and improve focus.
Physical activity can release built-up tension, increase circulation, and connect mind and body. Movement causes our bodies to release brain chemicals that reduce stress and improve mood. In fact, regular aerobic activity is as effective as psychiatric medication for some mental health concerns.
Animal Yoga Movement Activity
Yoga movements can help kids feel calmer and more mindful of what’s going on around them. Try this animal yoga activity for a fun, interactive way to practice yoga skills with a child you care about.
Muscle Squeeze Movement Activity
Difficult feelings can make kids feel tense. Teach them how to reduce tension in their bodies with this fun muscle squeeze activity.
Grounding Skills
These skills help students connect to the present moment by focusing attention on their senses or surroundings, which supports calm and reduces overwhelm.
Emotion dysregulation, or emotions that are out of control, take over our attention and thoughts. Grounding skills include strategies that redirect attention to the present moment, which helps our brain and bodies switch gears. These strategies also help reverse the body’s stress response and improve relaxation.
Glitter Jar Grounding Activity
A glitter jar is a calming tool that helps kids visualize their feelings by watching the glitter slowly settle after shaking it. Try this glitter jar activity to help kids feel more relaxed and in control of their emotions.
Visualization Skills
These skills use mental images or visual aids to help students understand and settle strong thoughts or emotions.
Visualization gives students a concrete way to understand emotions and see that intense feelings can settle. Visualization helps us put distance between our minds and our emotions, reducing emotional intensity and improving relaxation. Visualization can be used to teach about emotions or to reduce distress when feeling overwhelming emotions.
