Do you ever feel like you need a break from your students?
Not necessarily a break from your students, but a break from the day-to-day schedule of learning? These may feel like controversial questions to ask teachers, but as former teachers ourselves, we know they are important to ask.
We know that teachers, just like every single student, can benefit from a pause in the academic day. This is why brain breaks are so important! Not simply as a mental break, but as a way to help re energize students and teachers. All essential pieces to help support academic learning.
Why Are Brain Breaks Important?
Brain breaks are important because they help to refresh students’ minds and prepare them for the next task. They also help students stay focused during shorter laser-focused learning periods.
Remember, younger kids have a short attention span. A quick brain break can be just enough of a reset to get students back on task when they are unfocused.
By taking time for a fun break between lessons (or in the middle of a learning activity) you are helping your students to learn better. Moreover, when teachers use brain break activities regularly, it helps with classroom management.
When kids recognize that their teacher will give them regularly scheduled times for movement and relaxing, they are more likely to stay engaged when needed. This permission to take a break may seem like a small thing, but it has a lot of positive effects.
Permission to take helps to create positive relationships between teachers and students. This increases engagement, learning, and positive interactions in the classroom.
Giving students learning breaks is not something new to schools. Especially elementary schools. For years, students have gone to recess to get some movement and take a short break from the classroom.
Physical brain breaks are excellent! Whether it is regularly scheduled recess or a planned classroom activity.
However, a big movement break outside for a long period of time is not always an option. That’s why we found it important to have a toolkit of fun brain break ideas that we could use in our classroom at any time.
What are Brain Breaks?
As former classroom teachers we understand the need for brain break ideas that are easy to implement. Moreover, the need to have a variety of activities that can be done all year long.
In addition, as we mentioned earlier, students have a short attention span. Therefore, it is important that brain breaks can be done quickly to keep them engaged. A quick brain break activity also helps you to get back to the lesson faster (and more focused).
Here are our favorite brain break activities that we personally found to be great for elementary students – and teachers!
Energizing Brain Break Cards
Energizing brain break cards are a great way to take a short movement break. These include quick movements like “wiggle worm” or “partner pop.” In addition, you can have students participate in a fun “animal walk” around the room. The best part is all of these 12 energizing breaks can be done in the classroom in less than 5 minutes.
Mindful Movement Bundle
Spin like a tornado! Leap like a frog! Dive like a Narwhal! These are just a few of our fun and engaging mindful movements included in this bundle.
Complete with 12 sets of mindful movements, each set includes 3 themed moves. For example, spin like a tornado is part of the weather movement series.
All of these are easy to do at students’ desks. They can all also all be done in less than 2 minutes (depending on how many you want to do at a time). Most importantly, they give each child a chance for a mini mental break that supports their learning and overall wellbeing.
Mindful Yoga Cards
Yoga has become quite popular in elementary schools. Yoga is not only a great physical activity, but it also teaches students about mindfulness.
Elementary students are not exempt from stress. In fact, more and more research shows that stress is a regular part of younger kids’ lives. Therefore, using tools like yoga is beneficial beyond a simple classroom break. It helps to teach social emotional learning skills that are beneficial for every child.
This set of yoga cards teaches you and your students a new yoga pose on each card. These are easy poses that are fun and effective. They are easy to implement and do not require you to be a yoga teacher to include them in your classroom!
Mindful Breathing
While physical breaks are important to help students get the wiggles out, they are not the only type of break you can use in your classroom. Moreover, they are not the only important type of break.
In addition to a traditional yoga pose, breathing is one of the best ways to teach students about mindfulness. Breathing is something all students have access to and can do at any time – even on their own! Therefore, teaching students how to focus on their breath is a social emotional learning tool they can take with them for years beyond your classroom!
Breathing is also one of the simplest practices to teach your students. You can get started today by using these free hands on breathing cards with your kids.
In addition, we have other free mindfulness activities that are great brain breaks for supporting social and emotional learning.
How to Choose a Brain Break Activity
When deciding what type of brain breaks to use in your classroom, choose what works best for your and your students. Choose activities that your students enjoy, as well as ones that are easy to implement in your physical classroom.
The easier they are to implement, the more frequently you are likely to use them. Frequency truly is the key to making brain breaks effective. Therefore, whether you plan to use one a day or several – having at least a few different ideas to pull from is helpful.
All of the activities above are all designed to help with this! Moreover, something as simple as a class dance party once a week can be a fun and free brain activity for elementary students!
