Breath Support for Voice

Voice · Grades 2–8 · 12 cards · about 10 min

Exercises for diaphragmatic breath support.

Lie down with a book on your belly. Watch it rise as you breathe in.
Say it out loud

What's in this activity

  • Lie down with a book on your belly. Watch it rise as you breathe in.
  • Sit tall. Breathe in for 4, out for 4. Repeat 5 times.
  • Breathe in for 4, out for 6 on an /s/ sound.
  • Breathe in, then say 'ah' as long as you comfortably can. Time it.
  • Breathe in, then count out loud to 10 on one breath.
  • Breathe in, then say a whole sentence on one easy breath.
  • One hand on belly, one on chest. Only the belly hand should move.
  • Blow out slowly through a straw for 10 seconds.
  • Breathe in, then hum for as long as is comfortable.
  • Read one sentence per breath. Pause and refill at each period.
  • Practice: breathe, then say your name and one sentence.
  • Notice: running out of air means the breath in was too small.

About this activity

Twelve exercises that build from lying down to running speech: lie down with a book on your belly and watch it rise; breathe in for four and out for four; breathe out for six on an /s/ sound; count out loud to ten on one breath; read one sentence per breath, pausing to refill at each period. The order matters — the last few cards are the point, and the first few are what make them possible.

How to use it in a session

Do not skip the lying-down card, even with an older student who finds it undignified. Feeling the belly rise is the fastest way to establish what is being asked for, and the hand-on-belly and hand-on-chest card is the standing version of the same check. Work through in order across sessions rather than sampling: a student who cannot sustain an /s/ for six seconds is not ready for a sentence on one breath. Ten minutes is a full pass once the pattern is established.

What to listen for

Watch the shoulders. Rising shoulders on the in-breath mean the student is breathing high in the chest, which is the pattern most voice work is trying to change, and no amount of practice at the sentence level will fix it. Time the sustained ah across weeks — it is a simple number that moves and that students can see moving. Listen for the voice getting tight at the end of a breath, which is the sign to refill sooner rather than to push harder. Breath work assumes someone has looked at the folds themselves. Hoarseness lasting beyond about four weeks warrants an ENT examination first, since better support can make a voice sound easier without changing what is causing it.

Carrying it home

The book-on-the-belly exercise takes two minutes at bedtime and needs no supervision. Ask the family to make it part of settling down rather than a separate task, and to leave the correcting to the sessions.

Questions

What ages is this for?
Second through eighth grade, and the exercises are the same ones used with older students for voice and breath support work.
Do I need an account?
No, all twelve exercises are free to use here.
My student runs out of air mid-sentence. Where do I start?
With where the breath is taken, not with how much. The read-one-sentence-per-breath card teaches refilling at punctuation, which solves most of these cases faster than increasing capacity does.