The Calm Coach EYFS Programme
Six short video sessions, simple, playful and easy to follow. Specially designed for ages 4 to 5.
We regulate through connection
Nervous System Regulation for EYFS
At this age, it’s less about understanding why and much more about building simple emotional regulation habits early, in a way that’s playful rather than academic. Across the six weeks, children begin to build a simple and positive relationship with their bodies, feelings and emotions. Through playful, age-appropriate practices they learn that they have things they can do to help their bodies feel calm and ready. The aim is not to stop big feelings, but to help young children begin to recognise how they feel and discover simple ways to look after themselves and feel safe, settled and ready to learn.
Each session is around 4 to 5 minutes, pre-recorded, and ready to play below.
There’s nothing for staff to prepare, script or facilitate and it can be watched during PSHE.
Week 1 — Hand on Heart: Children begin by noticing how their bodies feel through simple squeeze-and-release movements and gentle breathing, before placing a hand on their heart and bringing to mind someone or something they love. This introduces heart breathing as their main tool, and the special rhyme that will close every session, creating a familiar, calming routine they can return to each week.
Week 2 — Butterfly Hug: Children learn the butterfly hug, using gentle alternating taps to help their bodies feel settled. This new tool comes before heart breathing each week, giving children a second simple way to support themselves, alongside their hand-on-heart practice and the closing rhyme.
Week 3 — Gratitude: Children are introduced to the word grateful, and learn that noticing something good, however small, can help their whole body feel calm and happy. After their butterfly hug, they bring their good thing to mind during heart breathing, connecting a new idea to a practice they already know well.
Children discover that when they feel “wobbly” inside, movement and a big sigh can help their bodies settle. The session also revisits gratitude from the previous week, showing children that their tools build on one another, before finishing with heart breathing and the rhyme.
Week 5 — Kind Hands, Words, Hearts: Children explore kindness and how it can help both themselves and others feel warm and cared for. Their butterfly hug becomes a “kind butterfly” practice, imagining each gentle tap as a small act of kindness, before children bring a kind thought to mind during their closing heart breathing.
Week 6 — You Know What To Do: Children bring together everything they’ve learned, shake and sigh, the butterfly hug, and heart breathing with the rhyme, choosing whatever thought feels right for them: someone they love, something they’re grateful for, or an act of kindness. The final session reinforces that these are tools they already know how to use, any time they need them.
One-Minute Reset: A simple one-minute breathing practice to help settle the nervous system, create a calmer environment and get children ready to learn. Ideally use it before registration or during form time. It can also be used whenever your class needs a quick reset, particularly after busy periods, transitions or when things feel a little overwhelming.
Just one minute. A simple reset for calm, connection and readiness to learn.
Built With Every Child In Mind
Every child’s nervous system is different, and that’s especially true for neurodivergent children, who may experience stress, sensory input and regulation in their own particular way. Our nervous system regulation for EYFS videos use play and story, not instruction. This anchor practice is a genuinely good fit for a mixed EYFS classroom, because it asks nothing of a child beyond a hand on the heart and a slow breath. There’s no talking required, no cognitive processing, and no right or wrong way to do it, so it tends to work well across a whole range of needs and communication styles, not just for children who find verbal approaches to regulation easy.
Why This Matters So Early
Young children haven’t yet learned to override what their body tells them. A tired four-year-old says so with their whole body, long before they’d think to say it in words. That instinct, to notice a feeling and trust it, is what this programme protects.
As children grow, life often teaches the opposite: push through, sit still, calm down on command. Many adults spend years trying to find their way back to a skill they had naturally at four.
This works with that instinct while it’s still intact. It’s a small thing to build in at four. It’s a much harder thing to rebuild at forty.
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