A daily classroom breathing program, the Breathing Break Intervention (BBI), improved third and fourth graders' arithmetic test scores compared to an active control group. In a randomized trial with 140 children, those who did brief breathing exercises for nine weeks scored higher on a standardized arithmetic test five months later, even after accounting for working memory and parents' education. Teacher ratings of math performance did not differ between groups. The results suggest that simple breathing practices can boost children's math skills.
Breath-based state mindfulness, but not self-reported trait mindfulness, was positively associated with emotion understanding in German primary school children over an eight-month school year. The multilevel model, controlling for gender, working memory updating, and concentration performance, showed a significant effect of state mindfulness on emotion understanding alongside time and working memory updating. The authors suggest that brief mindfulness practices may support social-emotional competences even without explicit social-emotional learning components, highlighting their potential relevance in school contexts.