In a bustling modern world, where children often juggle school, extracurricular activities, social pressures, and screen time, it’s crucial to provide them with tools to navigate life calmly and attentively! Enter mindfulness, an age-old practice tailored for the 21st century child. But what is mindfulness, and why is it essential for our young ones?
The Importance of Mindfulness for Kids
Mindfulness is the practice of paying purposeful attention to the present moment. This simple yet profound approach teaches individuals to be fully engaged in whatever they’re doing, rather than being lost in thoughts, distractions, or reactions. For children, cultivating mindfulness can offer a myriad of benefits:
Emotional Regulation: Children are still learning how to manage their emotions. Mindfulness equips them with skills to observe their feelings without being overwhelmed, fostering emotional resilience.
Enhanced Focus: In an age of distractions, mindfulness trains the brain to concentrate on tasks, improving academic performance and the ability to complete activities.
Stress Reduction: By cultivating awareness of the present, children can reduce anxiety about the past or future, promoting a sense of calm.
Increased Empathy: Mindfulness nurtures an understanding of one’s feelings, which in turn fosters compassion for others.
Improved Decision Making: A mindful child is more likely to pause and consider consequences, leading to wiser choices.
Given the transformative power of mindfulness, it’s a resource every child deserves access to. Below, you’ll find a collection of mindfulness activities tailored for children, including our very own Cosmic Kids Zen Dens – which are brilliant mindfulness videos that are popular with teachers and parents around the world.
Mindfulness Activities for Kids
- Mindful Breathing
Asking children to sit comfortably and close their eyes isn’t always realistic. If you can get them to do this, then great! But if not, you may be looking for some breathing exercises that kids may be more likely to engage with. We recommend trying finger breathing, dragon breathing or balloon breaths to get kids focussed solely on their breaths.
Finger Breathing
Trace a finger around your hand while inhaling and down while exhaling, it combines sensory stimulation with deep breaths, helping to centre and calm the mind.
Dragon Breathing
Inspired by the powerful imagery of a dragon, this technique involves taking a deep inhale through the nose and exhaling forcefully through the mouth, like a dragon releasing fire.
Balloon Breaths
Ask kids to imagine they are blowing up a huge hot air balloon. This is a great way to use a visualisation for an exercise that gets kids to fill and empty their lungs, rather than using short, stressful breaths.
Looking for more? Check out our updated breathing exercises for kids blog post!.
- Sound Awareness
This activity requires children to close their eyes and focus on the sounds around them. Whether it’s the chirping of birds, the hum of an air conditioner, or the distant chatter of people – the goal is to listen intently to focus on the moment.
To hone this skill, try our Zen Den episode ‘The Listening Game’ or ‘Superpower Listening’. They are both great episodes for getting kids to focus on their listening skills.
- The Spider-Man Meditation
Children love superheroes! Ask them to activate their ‘spidey senses’ – what can they hear? Smell? Feel? This is a playful way to engage all their senses and focus on the present.
We’ve made a Brain Break with this in mind. It sees us master the power of our spidey senses with a mini yoga session – and become Spiderman!
- Mindful Colouring
Colouring in can be very meditative, which is why it’s become such a popular activity for grown ups over the last few years too! Encourage them to focus on the sensation of the crayon or coloured pencils on paper, the colours they’re using, and the joy of creating!
We had a look for some good mindful kids colouring books to recommend and couldn’t find anything that we liked (a lot of them were either very difficult or just seemed like standard colouring books), so we made our own! These include blank thought bubbles so that as well as enjoying the colouring, kids can think about the thoughts in their minds and the characters on the page.
To download your copy, click the banner below!
- Nature Walks
Take children outside for a walk. Mindful walking is a way of noticing what’s going on around you while you take a walk. Instead of racing to where you’re going, you take your time and really notice what you see, hear and feel. Encourage kids to observe everything – the rustling leaves, the feel of the ground under their feet, the sounds of nature.
Join Jaime on a special Zen Den field trip – a mindful walk in the beautiful countryside!
- The Food Meditation
Give each child a small piece of food. It could be a piece of orange or a slice of apple. Ask them to hold it, feel its texture, and smell it. When they eat it, encourage them to do so slowly, savouring each bite. It’s a delightful way to practise mindfulness!
- Mindful Journals
Provide children with a notebook where they can jot down their feelings, observations, or things they’re grateful for. Physically writing down feelings and fears helps them reflect and stay present.
We’ve made a video all about how to make a ‘Magic Worry Box’. A physical space for kids to put their feelings after writing them down to help them feel separated from them.
- The Body Scan
Doing a body scan is all about heightening your awareness of yourself and your body.
Ask kids to lie down on the floor, and do a virtual scan of their bodies from the top of their heads, to the tips of their fingers and down to their toes.
Through regular practice, kids become more attuned to their emotional and physical states. This enhanced awareness plays an important role in fostering emotional regulation and resilience.
- Be The Pond
Be The Pond is one of the world’s most popular mindfulness activities for kids. It teaches kids to understand their emotions and big feelings and how to deal with them! By thinking of our mind as a pond, and our emotions as fish swimming around that pond, we can think about how these feelings come and go.
- FOFBOCNOF Guided Relaxation
FOFBOCNOF is a playful, quirky acronym, but behind it hides a powerful mantra for mindfulness that stands for ‘Feet On Floor, Bum On Chair, Nose On Face’.
It’s about grounding our feet to the ground, thinking about how it feels to be sitting in our chair, and then being mindful of the nose on our face.
Once we’re grounded with our feet to the floor and bums on seats, being mindful of the nose on our face brings attention to our breath, so that we can have a moment of mindfulness as we breathe in and out.
- Positive Thinking / Anchoring (finding our happy place!)
Like a boat, we’re tossed around by the waves of life! Everyone has their own anchor, that settles us down in times of uncertainty.
Ask kids to think about their Happy Place – or maybe they can draw it?
To help kids find their anchor, try our Finding Your Happy Place Zen Den episode. Jaime teaches us how to use ‘anchoring’ when we need to feel good! It means thinking of something that makes us feel happy – like hugging a dog! 🐶
- Movies in My Mind
It can be fun to make movies in our minds! By closing our eyes and thinking about all of the things we love, we can make our own movies in our mind and even be the star!
In this episode, Jaime explains how we can create positive movies in our mind.
About Cosmic Kids Zen Dens
Designed specifically for children, the Zen Dens episodes present mindfulness and relaxation exercises through engaging narratives and animations. Jamie brings concepts to life, ensuring kids not only learn but also internalise these mindfulness practices.
This amazing mindfulness resource is available on YouTube and ad-free on the Cosmic Kids App, making it easily accessible for teachers and parents. Incorporate them into classroom relaxation times or use them as a wind-down activity at home!
Introducing mindfulness to children isn’t just about equipping them with tools to handle today’s challenges, but it’s also about setting a foundation for lifelong well-being! We hope some of these ideas will be useful mindfulness resources.
