Social Emotional Learning/Mindfulness
A Mindful Menu for Third Grade, Fourth Grade and Fifth Grade
Choose to do a variety of activities from the menu OR pick a favorite to do over again.
Can you think of a time when your brain feels “shaken up”?
Draw a picture of something that makes you feel calm.
Try remembering this drawing the next time your brain feels “shaken up.”
Taking big breaths can help calm us and focus us.
Try it.
Stand with your feet apart.
Slowly breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Lift your arms so they meet over your head.
Let out your breath slowly as you bring your arms down.
Repeat.
Sit comfortably.
Close your eyes.
Listen carefully for sounds you hear in your house or outside (do this for 30 secs)
Open your eyes.
What did you hear?
Try it again… Did you hear something new and different?
Here is an example of being mindful: You taste a food to decide whether you like it. Here is an example of being unmindful: You see a food and immediately decide you don’t like it. You declare that you don’t like orange food.
Draw a picture of you doing an activity you enjoy.
Are you mindful when you do this activity?
Here are links to some activities you may want to try:
Count as you breathe with Octopus to find the calm beneath the waves.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljQxIzUQihs
A Cosmic Kids Yoga Adventure!
Join Jaime on a kids yoga adventure - about having big dreams. Arnold is an ant who lives in an apple. He has a dream to go to space - but how could something amazing like that happen to him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWowDC3x0hE
A Mindful Moment
Our students have begun doing this in class. Try it at home! It’s short and quick and helps to recenter yourself!
A full hour of mindful music for kids with soothing cartoon animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HrkXT5Bc9E
4 Fun Mindfulness Activities and Exercises for Children
Let’s start with these simple ways to attune children with their bodies. At a young age, humans naturally curious about the strength and flexibility of their bodies. It’s a great age to introduce body-mind awareness as a valuable way to take care of themselves.
Mindful Posing
One easy way for children to dip their toes into mindfulness is through body poses. To get your kids excited, tell them that doing fun poses can help them feel strong, brave, and happy.
Have the kids go somewhere quiet and familiar, a place they feel safe. Next, tell them to try one of the following poses:
The Superman: this pose is practiced by standing with the feet just wider than the hips, fists clenched, and arms reached out to the sky, stretching the body as tall as possible.
The Wonder Woman: this pose is struck by standing tall with legs wider than hip-width apart and hands or fists placed on the hips (Karen Young, 2017).
Ask the kids how they feel after a few rounds of trying either of these poses. You may be surprised.
Spidey-Senses
While on the subject of superheroes, this can be a related “next step” to teach kids how to stay present.
Instruct your kids to turn-on their “Spidey senses,” or the super-focused senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch that Spiderman uses to keep tabs on the world around him. This will encourage them to pause and focus their attention on the present, opening their awareness to the information their senses bring in (Karen Young, 2017).
This is a classic mindfulness exercise and encourages observation and curiosity—great skills for any human to practice.
The Mindful Jar
This activity can teach children how strong emotions can take hold, and how to find peace when these strong emotions feel overwhelming.
First, get a clear jar (like a Mason jar) and fill it almost all the way with water. Next, add a big spoonful of glitter glue or glue and dry glitter to the jar. Put the lid back on the jar and shake it to make the glitter swirl.
Finally, use the following script or take inspiration from it to form your own mini-lesson:
“Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you’re stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That’s why it’s so easy to make silly decisions when you’re upset – because you’re not thinking clearly. Don’t worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grownups too).
[Now put the jar down in front of them.]
Now watch what happens when you’re still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you’re calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer. Deep breaths during this calming process can help us settle when we feel a lot of emotions” (Karen Young, 2017).
This exercise not only helps children learn about how their emotions can cloud their thoughts, but it also facilitates the practice of mindfulness while focusing on the swirling glitter in the jar.
Try having the kids focus on one emotion at a time, such as anger, and discuss how the shaken verse settling glitter is like that emotion.
Safari
The Safari exercise is a great way to help kids learn mindfulness. This activity turns an average, everyday walk into an exciting new adventure.
Tell your kids that you will be going on a safari: their goal is to notice as many birds, bugs, creepy-crawlies, and any other animals as they can. Anything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies is of interest, and they’ll need to focus all of their senses to find them, especially the little ones (Karen Young, 2017).
A similar exercise for adults is the mindfulness walk. This exercise provokes the same response in children that a mindful walk elicits in adults: a state of awareness and grounding in the present.
If you’re interested in more information on how to encourage the practice of mindfulness in children and teens, you can check out the other exercises from this website. Otherwise, head on to the next section where we lay out key tips for teaching these concepts.
Try some yoga poses.
Do the poses each day and you will keep getting better.
Remember to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth mindfully while you pose.
