Mindfulness Jar

Activity Overview

Integrating mindfulness into everyday moments of play, movement, games, and art can help your child build up healthy body-mind connections and deepen their growing social emotional skills. Not only do we want to help children develop their understanding of feelings, but we need to also give them a firm foundation in strategies to change feelings, sublimate their impulses, and regulate themselves so that they can successfully operate in groups. As adults, we learn to share our problems in words. Children are still developing this capacity and tend to act out their problems as their impulse determines. Because they are already deeply anchored to more non-verbal ways of expression, a mindfulness jar is a powerful visual tool to help children make visual connections between their thoughts, feelings and behaviors and the way their bodies are reacting. The glitter in the jar represents our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When a child is feeling upset or angry, nervous, excited or scared, they can shake the jar and watch the glitter move around as it gradually settles. As the glitter settles to the bottom of the jar, adults can help children make the connection for children that all negative feelings pass eventually, and our bodies and minds settle too.

What You Need

• A mason jar, spice jar, or plastic water bottle with labels removed

• Warm water

• Clear glue

• Glitter

• Food coloring (optional)

• Hot glue (grown-up use only)

Steps

1. Fill a clear jar with clear glue. The more glue you use, the longer it will take for the glitter to settle at the bottom.

2. Add a tablespoon or more of glitter to the jar and a quarter of a cup of warm water. You might want to add optional food coloring at this point as well. Stir to combine, then fill the jar the rest of the way with warm water.

3. Grown-ups can then seal the cap of the jar closed using a hot glue gun.

4. Instruct your student to shake the jar really fast and watch the glitter swirl. Connect for them the relationship between this visual and how swirly our minds might feel when strong emotions such as anger or frustration occur.

5. Relate how our body and mind settle just like the glitter in the jar. It might take time, we might need help, but our negative feelings eventually pass and we regain our calm readiness just like the stillness of the contents in the jar. Always remind them that their feelings are valid and it is good to feel them, just like it is good to shake the jar up. Our feelings will change from day to day and minute to minute, depending on what we are faced with, but the important thing is how we choose to respond.

6. As with all our social emotional tools, we highly suggest you help your child practice with their mindfulness jar in calm, happy moments in order to help them connect this resource to something they can go to when strong feelings overtake them and thinking is less clear.

Guiding Questions

• How are our feelings and thoughts like the glitter in the jar?

• How does the glitter remind you of [anger, sadness, nervousness, excitement, frustration]?

• When you notice a big feeling like [anger, sadness, nervousness, excitement, frustration] in your body, where do you feel it?

• How can we settle this feeling when it swirls around like the glitter in the jar?

• Can we practice together?