A Hands-On Tool That Helps Kids Manage Their Emotions

In an elementary classroom, there are plenty of moments when emotions run high. A challenging math problem can lead to frustration. A disagreement at recess can follow a student back into the classroom. A difficult morning at home can make it hard to settle into the school day. Sometimes, students can’t identify exactly what’s wrong; they only know that they feel overwhelmed.

One simple tool that I’ve found helpful for these moments is a breathing board.

A breathing board is a visual board that students can trace with their hands while practicing slow, controlled breathing. As our class is called “The Mountain Movers,” I was thrilled when I found a low-cost version that’s a 3D tactile mountain craft on Studio Sprout called Breath Board.

Making the Boards

When students build the boards themselves, they’re more likely to utilize them.

I cut up pieces of cardboard into approximately 12-by-6-inch pieces (or bottoms of copy paper boxes and tops cut in half). I asked students for donations of fabric scraps in varying textures.

As part of the preparation for this activity, we read Clovis Keeps His Cool, by Katelyn Aronson, illustrated by Eve Farb. It’s a wonderfully symbolic story of a bull who runs his grandmother’s china shop and uses different strategies to stay calm in frustrating situations.

Clovis listens to calming music, so while we worked, we dimmed the lights and put on calm piano music, usually with a fun seasonal scene from YouTube with a fireplace and flickering candles in the background. Clovis lights a lavender candle in the book, so we put on my lavender essential oil diffuser. Clovis also pets his cat to feel calm, so we talked about different sensory textures that we might like to feel on our boards.

My students worked to make collages—arranging fabric into a mountain and attaching pipe cleaners up one side and down the other with four pony beads on each side. The ability to physically move beads while counting is an added bonus of these tactile boards.

Getting Started Together

I first introduced breathing boards as a whole-class strategy during our morning meeting. Rather than presenting breathing as something students should do only when they’re feeling upset, we practiced it together when everyone was calm.

We used the boards to practice four-count or “box” breathing. We discussed the fact that elite athletes, astronauts, and military members use four-count breathing to regulate their nervous system to help them cope with stress and anxiety.

Practicing together helps normalize breathing as a classroom strategy. It takes only a few minutes, but the activity provides a calm and predictable way to begin the day. It’s not something to implement only for the student who is having a difficult moment.

Breath boards are also a helpful all-class strategy when students are reentering the classroom from a transition, such as when my class comes back from lunch into reading intervention. Taking a minute or two together on the rug before going off to activities is calming and helps to regulate their bodies and brains back into academics.

Taking the Boards to the Quiet Corner

Once students were familiar with the breathing boards, they were given the choice of bringing them home or leaving them in the classroom. Some offered their boards to our classroom quiet corner, a place designed to help students regulate feelings of anger, sadness, or frustrations and then rejoin work.

A breathing board provides something concrete for kids to hold on to. Instead of being told to “calm down” or “take deep breaths,” students have access to a tactile tool to help them focus their energy.

They can pick up a board and start sliding beads:

Breathe in.

Hold.

Breathe out.

Hold.

Repeat as needed (usually four or five times).

In doing this activity, I also noticed that the boards gave students some independence. They didn’t need an adult sitting beside them coaching through every breath. Because we had practiced the routine together, the visual itself could serve as the reminder how to do the breath work.

Using the Boards On Their Own

One of the most encouraging things happened when some students began asking to keep breathing boards at their tables instead of keeping our board collection near the rug for Morning Meeting times.

My students weren’t necessarily having major emotional moments. Instead, they discovered that the boards could help with the smaller frustrations that happen throughout an ordinary school day: A writing assignment felt overwhelming. A math problem was difficult. Something had to be erased and attempted again. It was difficult to concentrate.

Rather than waiting until frustration became big enough to require leaving the table, students could quietly use the breathing board right where they were. The board was no longer just a tool for “calming down.” It had become a tool that students could use to recognize frustration early and respond to it. For me, that acknowledgment is one of the biggest benefits of teaching regulation strategies in the classroom. We want children to begin noticing what is happening inside themselves and eventually be able to think, I’m getting frustrated. I know something that might help.

At one point during a very hectic teaching day, I sat quietly at my stool with my eyes closed, breathing with my finger in the air tracing my four counts. One student called out, “You guys, chill out, she’s box breathing!” Of course, a breathing board doesn’t solve every problem. Some students need movement, conversation, sensory tools, or additional adult support. The breathing board is simply one option.

Its simplicity is also part of what makes it useful. Once students understand the breathing pattern, they can eventually use the strategy without a board at all.

Building Independence One Breath at a Time

A classroom full of children will never be perfectly calm. What I want is for students to build a growing collection of strategies they understand and can choose from when they need them.

For one child, that might mean heading to the quiet corner after an upsetting interaction with a peer. For another, it might mean keeping a breathing board nearby during a challenging math lesson. For the whole class, it might mean beginning the morning meeting with a few rounds of box breathing so that we can settle our bodies and prepare for the day ahead.

The board itself is remarkably straightforward. But what students learn through using it is much bigger: Emotions can be noticed, frustration can be managed, and there are concrete steps they can take to help themselves feel ready to try again. Sometimes, that first step is as simple as beads and breaths up and down a mountain.