I don’t know about you, but when I sit through a faculty meeting or professional development session, within 15 to 20 minutes, I’m getting antsy. If you can relate, just imagine how your students must feel when they’ve been sitting for too long. Brain breaks are the perfect way to help your students redirect their energy and focus when they start to fade.
I find it super-beneficial to incorporate quick mindful, physical, and mental check-ins with my students as a regular part of my classroom routine. These breaks include all types of movement–yoga, and breathing exercises, as well as jokes, quick videos, and more. The activities I use have helped me throughout my lifetime, so I love sharing them with my students. Here are my favorite brain breaks for kids that are sure to increase productivity and give your kids a much-needed way to unwind before the next lesson.
Download the brain break cards for a deck of ready-to-do brain breaks.
Mindful Brain Breaks for Kids
1. Mental health check-in
Transitions are a big part of the elementary school day. When I first started teaching 19 years ago, I was surprised by just how much time it takes to get ready for specials or to bring students back from centers. It’s hard not to feel like that’s lost time. That’s why using transition time for mental health check-ins is such a game changer. Mental health check-ins can help students get in touch with their emotions, acknowledge and cultivate positive feelings, and cope with negative emotions, to be more focused throughout the day.
Learn more: How To Use Transition Times (Like Lining Up) for Mental and Emotional Health Check-Ins
4. Play focus ball
Walk your kids through the following exercise: Stand or sit with legs and feet together. Bring your palms together in front of your chest. Keep your fingertips touching as you pull your palms apart, forming a ball with your fingers. Press your fingertips together until you feel the muscles in your hands and arms activating. See if you feel your core tighten too. Now close your eyes and as you breathe in, inflate your ball, and as you breathe out, flatten the ball by pushing your palms together. (Repeat these instructions for 60 seconds).
7. Strrrretch it out
No one should sit for too long. Build in stretch breaks to allow students to stretch muscles that just sat through a long lesson. One side stretch you can do: students can stand with their feet shoulder-distance apart. Put their left hand on their hip and raise their right hand overhead. Lean to the left and stretch their arm as far as they can to the left. Repeat on the right side. Then stand tall and slowly roll down one vertebra at a time until their hands reach the floor (or at least their shins). Have them take a deep breath then slowly roll back up. Repeat as necessary.
8. Focus on sound
Have kids sit quietly with their eyes closed. Ring a chime or gong. Have them listen carefully to the chime, feeling the vibration in their body as the sound reverberates and then slowly fades. Tell them to breathe slowly and deeply as they focus on the sound.
9. Finger breathing
Use your fingers to breathe in and out. Trace your left hand with the pointer finger of your right hand. Breathe in as you move up a finger, breathe out as you move down a finger. Repeat until you’ve breathed all 10 fingers.
10. Cross-body exercise
Have kids stand tall and cross one leg in front of the other while pressing the outsides of their feet together. Now have them cross their arms over each other at the wrists. Clasp their hands and curl their arms into their chest. Take a few breaths, and uncross and cross the opposite way for a few more breaths.
12. Break out the hot hands
This is a good break when you sense a weariness in the air. Have kids rub their hands together vigorously until they warm up. Tell them to close their eyes and place their hands over their eyes. Instruct them to breathe deeply as they clear their minds and refocus.
14. Two minute reset
Never underestimate the power of stillness. When the energy gets a little ramped up, and it’s time for the entire class to take a pause, have them drop everything and glue their eyes to the screen as you show this countdown. The gentle lulling of the waves and the sight of the sun sparkling off the water will reset their nervous system in a jiffy.
15. Slow motion wings
Walk your kids through this winged movement: Sit cross-legged on the floor. Stretch your arms down by your sides with your palms facing inward toward your body. Slowly raise both arms while rotating hands forward. When your arms reach shoulder level, your hands should be facing forward. Continue raising arms, slowly rotating palms so that by the time hands are overhead, palms are facing each other. Slowly lower arms, repeating the rotation (palms facing each other, palms facing forward, palms facing sides) until they are once again resting at your sides. As you raise and lower your arms, stretch them as long as you can, as if you are scraping the sides of the room and the ceiling. Repeat slowly three times, breathing deeply.
Physical Education Brain Breaks for Kids
17. Line up
Kids are very social and curious beings. Most of them love to chat with one another at any chance they can get. Lining up to leave the room for anything is the perfect chance for them to mix and mingle. Make a more productive use of this time by having students line up in special ways. Some fun ideas include lining up in alphabetical order by name, by birth date, or by height order.
18. Just jump!
Sometimes kids just need to bounce their energy out. Have them pretend they are bouncing on a mini-trampoline (this will keep their movement on a vertical plane instead of all over the room), and give them a couple of minutes to let loose!
19. Do the wave
Here’s one for a group of kids: Start the wave! Beginning at one end of the room, kids stand up and throw their arms overhead, bringing them back down as they return to their seats. Each row follows until you reach the other end of the room. Amp it up by encouraging your kids to tap their feet or tap their hands on their legs so that they are in constant motion. (This activity works great on Zoom too.)
20. Stir the pot
Have kids visualize they are standing in front of an enormous cauldron. Inside the cauldron is an ooey-gooey pot of caramel. Take hold of a large stirrer and plunge it to the bottom of the pot. Slowly begin to stir in a clockwise direction. Have them use their whole body to help get a full range of motion in their wrists and shoulders. Instruct them to throw their hips into the action. After a minute or two, reverse the direction.
21. Make a pizza
Similar to stir the pot, sit on the rug or in a circle outside and have students make an imaginary pizza. As they move to roll out the dough, spread sauce, and sprinkle on toppings and cheese, they’re moving and stretching.
22. Make it rain
Conjure up a rainstorm! Sitting or standing at a desk or table, have kids tap one finger on the desk, then two, then three, then four, then their whole hand until you all feel like you’re in the middle of a deluge. Work your way backward from five down to one as the storm ebbs away.
23. Knee-to-elbow
First, instruct kids to touch their left elbow to their right knee, then touch their right elbow to their left knee. Switch back and forth, going slowly at first, building speed until they are going at a vigorous pace. Next, do some windmills by standing tall with their feet shoulder-width apart and their arms stretched out. Bend at the waist and touch their right hand to their left toes, then their left hand to their right toes. Switch back and forth.
24. Xs and Os
Walk kids through the following exercise: Sitting in a chair with your feet on the ground and legs together, curl your body into your lap, folding yourself into an O shape. Next, open your arms and legs wide, forming an X shape with your body. Pull back into an O shape, then back out to an X shape. Repeat three times.
25. Energize in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Get hearts pumping with a quick sequence of exercises. Call out five actions for your students to do as quickly as they can. For instance, five jumping jacks, four push-ups, three sit-ups, two squat jumps, and one tree pose.
26. Imaginary skateboard
Have your kids line up next to a wall and place one hand on the wall. Tell them to plant the foot closest to the wall and swing the other leg, as if pushing off the ground on a skateboard. Start slowly, with tiny swings, moving up to power pushes. Repeat on the other side.
27. Dance break
Music is a great way to reset the mood in a room and raise the energy level. Put on a fun song and have a 30-second freestyle dance party. Here’s a big list of school-appropriate songs for kids.
29. Cherry pickers
This easy activity will get your students’ hearts pumping and give their brains a boost. Have them jump up off the ground, then down to the floor into a push-up position. From there, instruct them to hop their feet up into a frog position, then pop up to a standing position.
31. Skip it out
When the energy is fading and kids need to get their blood flowing, put on a peppy song and pull out the imaginary jump ropes. Have kids skip or jump rope in place until the song ends.
32. Make like a blender
Tell kids it’s time to make fruit smoothies. Ask them to pretend they are in a blender and they are strawberries (or blueberries or bananas, etc.). Dramatically pour orange juice or yogurt into the air in front of you. Tell kids when you flip the switch, they need to wiggle and jiggle (separately, not together) until they are each individually blended up. Start with a slow speed, moving up to medium, fast, and finally turbo speed. And then reverse it! Start at turbo speed and go back to slow speed.
33. Silent cheer
This activity is perfect for the end of an activity or a sustained amount of work time—especially for kids who are learning remotely. Let kids stand up and silently cheer and gesture in celebration. How animated can they get?!
35. Play popcorn
Students will all be sitting in their chairs, and at any time, a student can jump up and say “Pop!” Once they do, that student remains standing. If two students pop up at the same time, everyone takes their seats, and the game starts over. How quickly can the entire class pop without having to start over?
36. Hit the wall
Pushing against a solid object is a good way to displace extra energy from your body. Have kids stand facing a wall with their arms stretched out in front of them, palms on the surface of the wall. Push the wall away with all their strength for a count of 10. Relax for five seconds, then push again. Other activities they can do at the wall include calf stretches and wall push-ups.
37. 3, 2, 1 blastoff!
Instruct kids to stand and then squat down with their hands on the ground in front of them. All together, count down 3, 2, 1. When you get to zero, they should push up like a rocket, jumping as high as they can—letting all of their energy burst from their center.
38. Quick as a snap, wink
This is a quick and easy refocusing activity. Tell kids to snap their left fingers while they wink their right eye. Switch to snapping their right fingers while winking their left eye. This activity is particularly effective for younger learners who may find both activities challenging.
39. Balance break
A great way to get kids out of their chairs is to practice balance. Have them hop on one foot. Then up the ante by having them stand on one foot and bend their other knee out in front of them.
40. Tabletop push-ups
Kids can use their desk, a chair, the side of their couch—anything really. Have them place their hands on the table and focus their eyes in the center, moving down slowly and pushing back up.
41. Shake it out
Using this technique, students pretend to be inside a maraca. After shaking up their bodies, they then settle back for the next activity. Other ideas include pretending to be in a snow globe, tambourine, egg shaker, etc.
42. Face gymnastics
Have kids get their silly on for 30 seconds. Tell them to wiggle their eyebrows up and down as fast as they can. Then try to raise one eyebrow at a time.
43. Say “cheese!”
This always makes everyone laugh: Make the biggest, cheesiest smile possible. Students automatically get the warm fuzzies, and watching their classmates make funny smiles just adds to the good feelings in the room. Students can walk around smiling at each other, or just do it at their seats.
Educational Brain Breaks for Kids
Learn more: We Are Teachers
48. Coloring break
Set a timer for five minutes and have students work on a coloring sheet while you play calming music. The calming activity is a great way to refocus students as they calm down from a high-energy activity.
Check out bug coloring sheets, space coloring pages, and dinosaur coloring pages.
50. Gather your favorite GIFs
Make a slideshow of your favorite GIFs and have your kids act them out. Funny animals are a good place to start!
51. Find the object
Kids don’t even have to get out of their seats for this one, but they can! Have one student start by finding an object and saying, “I see something beginning with the letter [fill in the blank].” The first person to guess the item correctly gets to choose the next object. This can be a fun one to play on Zoom too! You can have kids add in additional clues to help.
52. Clap for a little call-and-response
Pep things up with a little call-and-response clapping. It’s simple to do and is often used in the classroom to get students’ attention. Simply clap out a pattern that your kids will repeat back to you. Switch out the pattern a few times until everyone is focused and engaged. Alternatively, try a vocal call-and-response. Sing out a few riffs and have kids echo the tune back to you.
59. Categories
Name a category by subject. Students then take turns saying a word that fits into the category. For an extra challenge, find something that fits into the category for each letter of the alphabet. Students can write them down on paper before sharing answers, or just play orally and write the answers on the board. Fun times all around!
60. Scattergories
Another variation of the above would be to play a board game like Scattergories. First, come up with 10 different categories that can be used multiple times. Next, choose one letter of the alphabet for the round. Each answer must start with the same letter.
Classic Brain Breaks for Kids
These brain breaks are the ones that never go out of style. You may remember them from your own elementary school days.
61. Heads Up, 7 Up
Remember this game from elementary school? Seven kids are chosen to stand up in front of the room, while the rest of the class puts their heads down with a thumb up. The seven students go around and each lightly tap their chosen person. The chosen seven then try to guess who picked them. Those who guess correctly get to take the place of who picked them, and the game continues on.
64. Brain-break compilations by grade level
If you are looking for a sample of brain breaks suitable for your students by grade level, look no further. We have created separate links of 25 videos each for individual grades at the elementary level. Go down the list and find the right one for you!
- Kindergarten brain breaks
- First grade brain breaks
- Second grade brain breaks
- Third grade brain breaks
- Fourth grade brain breaks
- Fifth grade brain breaks
