Breathing with a 5 year old

Do you know what your lungs do for you?

Most kids don't know what their lungs do for them, where they are, or how much room they take up in their body and forget about the diaphragm. What in the world is that anyway!?

When I asked a group of 5 year olds to breathe in until their bellies filled up like balloons they all started moving their backs forward and back to make a puffed up motion, not one of them was actually taking air into their body to make this happen. In fact I think they were all holding their breath! I tried having them lay down with a hand on their belly, as I instructed them to breathe in and asked if they could fill their belly go up and then down. One child asked if he could take his shirt off so his belly could breathe better. (OMG how did I not laugh) A lot of movement was happening but no one was breathing. How was I supposed to teach this seemingly abstract concept to kids?

When I asked them what breath was. They told me it was a automatic thing that happens to them.

When I asked what the breath dose for them. Their response was, it puts air in their bodies.

When I asked why they think this happens. They said, because we need air but we don't know why...

The lightbulb in my head was turning on. I know that kids this age are concrete thinkers, they need to see something to know its real. Discussing the idea of breath and talking about the anatomy of it with them wasn't quite going to do it. I had an idea. The next class I had brought a bunch of my sons stuffed animals. I gave a quick anatomy lesson (with pictures) of the lungs, ribs and diaphragm, I had them use their hands to fill their ribs on the sides of their bodies so they could get a sense of how big their lungs were and where they were located. We laid down on our mats as I placed a stuffed animal on each child's belly. I played a ocean sounds sound track and had them breathe to the sound of the ocean waves. We made a game of this, they could see when they breathed in their animals went up and when they breathed out their animals went down. The concept was starting to make sense. Some of the children were still moving their spine or pelvis up and down to make the belly motion but most of them got it. We continued this breathing game for about 5 minutes, adding fast and then slow breath. By then end of the session every one was belly breathing, and not one of them wanted to return the animals to me.

I didn't realize the impact this little exercise had on my students until the next class when every one of them came to class with a stuffed animal they brought from home. We spent the first 5 minutes of class sharing stories of how they used their stuffies to breathe at home and how breathing with them helped calm, soothe and relax them and even for a few fall asleep.

This was very touching for me to hear. I wanted everyone to be able to have a BellieBuddy. With the inspiration form the kids BellieBuddies was born. Check out www.BellieBuddies.com for more info on the product and continue breathing at home...