What are Mindfulness Activities That I Can Do with Kids?

by Julie Diamond, OCT

**this blog will take about 4 minutes to read. If you’re short on time, or would like to extend your child’s learning of mindfulness with some support, check out our 6-week mindfulness course for kids here.**

For young children, learning to express and regulate their emotions is a crucial part of their development. However, in today's world, where distractions are constant, this task can be particularly challenging.

This is where mindfulness comes into play. Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment and fully being there. Mindfulness offers children valuable tools to not only focus their attention but also to manage and destress from overwhelming emotions.

Kids can really benefit from learning mindfulness early on. It can help them deal with their feelings and handle challenges better. Plus, it teaches them the importance of empathizing with others, improving their focus, and understanding themselves better.

Mindfulness Activities for Home or School:

Here are a few mindfulness activities you can try at home or school:

1. Take Deep Breaths: Just focusing on breathing can help a lot. Kids can try this before bed, when they wake up, or anytime they need to calm down. There are different types of breath you could try with your child. A couple of fun ones I like to do are:

• Rainbow Breath – Sit comfortably and imagine inflating a huge hot air balloon. As you breathe in through your nose, you cup your hands around your mouth then when you breathe out through your mouth you expand your hands outward, picturing the growing hot air balloon. This connects their imagination with creating a sense of calm and relaxation. Check out this video of Rainbow Breath as a guide.

• Bunny Breath – Take three quick sniffs in through the nose like a bunny, and one long exhale through the nose. Repeat 5x.

2. Explore with Senses: Kids can have fun exploring things around them using their senses. This can be a great daily activity to do together or one you can use to ground them when your child is anxious or stressed.

Here are the steps:

· Look for five things that you can see and say those five things that you can see aloud.

· Notice and describe the texture of four things you can touch.

· Name three sounds you can hear.

· Say two smells you recognize.

· Focus and name one thing that you can taste right now. You can take a sip or bite of something, or simply notice the current taste in your mouth.

3. Be Thankful: Keeping a journal where kids write down three things they're thankful for every day helps them see the good things in life, even when things are tough.

If your child isn’t keen on writing, try sharing 3 things you’re thankful for to start or end the day. It will help reframe their mind to think positively and notice things throughout the day they are grateful for.

4. Move Mindfully: Activities like yoga, walking in nature, or dancing can help kids connect with their bodies and the present moment.

Check out this video for Dinosaur Yoga for kids and try doing quick exercises or stretches during the day to help recharge and stay focused.

Or this video to try yoga together!

5. Eat Mindfully: Kids can enjoy their meals more by eating slowly and paying attention to the taste, smell, and feel of their food. 

You can also teach them to recognize hunger cues.

Ask them questions such as:

Do you hear your stomach? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? Do you get a headache? Do you feel dizzy? Is it hard to concentrate on what you’re doing?

Talk to them after they’ve eaten so they can also learn how to gauge when they are full. The idea is to get them to talk about how they feel and what they’re noticing about their body.

6. Start Your Day with a Calm Minute: Beginning the day with a short mindfulness exercise for children to help them get focused and ready to learn. Or you can put on some calming music or nature sounds which help sharpen their listening skills and concentrate better. I use calming music to start the school day and for all transitions to help my students get settled and ready to learn.

5. Get Artsy Mindfully: Doing art projects lets students express themselves and connect with their feelings mindfully. Here are a few activities I’ve done with my students:

• Draw Your Breath – give them a marker and paper. With the marker in the middle of the paper, breathe in and out without raising the marker from the paper. When you breathe in, you draw a line in any direction. Then you breathe out and draw a line. Keep drawing lines and shapes as you breathe in and out about 40 times. Once you’ve completed 40 breaths, then you can colour in the shapes or draw pictues from the artwork you created with your breath.

• Mandala Colouring – Check out the link here for over 200 free mandala colouring pages. Colouring is a fun and relaxing activity for all ages.  

Doing mindfulness activities is very beneficial for kids. It helps them grow mentally, emotionally, and socially. By learning to pay attention to the present moment, manage their feelings, and be resilient, kids can handle life's ups and downs better.

Are you interested in learning more about mindfulness for kids? Check out our 6-week mindfulness course for kids here which outlines what you’ll learn about each week. We are also offering a FREE mindfulness workshop on April 16 which you can sign up for here.