Finding meaningful ways to engage children in becoming aware of and exploring their emotions is an important step towards raising confident, happy kids. And the last few weeks the kids and I filled our time together breathing deep, talking about our emotions and playing! I would like to share some of the wonderful projects we did that helped us engage our whole-selves, become aware of our emotions and find ways to center ourselves. These projects are perfect to do with young children and even have complete lesson plans for those of you working with a group of kids. Most of the projects have a bit of science thrown in while all of them offer kid-approved fun and creativity!

An Aromatic State Of Mind

Conduct a science experiment with essential oils to see what oils insight certain feelings. Then create a unique piece of art work inspired by an aroma of your choice!

Flower 'n' Spice Play Dough Mandalas

Create a beautiful fragrant meditative mandala from lovely botanicals.

Meditation Friends

Create a special mind jar with a friendly face. This project helps kids learn to breathe and slow down with they feel out of sorts.

Meditation Friends II

A special twist on Meditation Friends that allows for even more personalization of your child's special new friend!

Yoga Play With Babar's Yoga For Elephants

Simple yoga play with a favorite elephant! We used this super fun book to guide us through a morning of giggly yoga.

Do you have any special ways to help kids learn about emotions or mindful ways of how to engage themselves? I would love to hear about them and give them a try!

Wishing you lots of peaceful fun!

An Original Laurent De Brunhoff Book

A couple of years ago, I spied this awesome book peaking its binding out of a shelf at one of my favorite used book stores. I loved Babar as a child and my child loves yoga, so this was a win-win. I brought Babar's Yoga home with me and wrapped it up for my little one's Valentine's surprise, a total gift of love. Immediately upon opening the book she wanted me to read it and with in moments we were both giggling, breathing and doing yoga together. As I said this was a couple of years ago; she loved the book then and still loves it, keeping it bedside along with a few other precious books.

Babar's Yoga for Elephants also made a trip to the preschool with me as part of our unit on Mindful Self Care. The kids and I read though it, having a blast stretching and rolling around on the floor together. We took a few moments here and there with hands on our bellies to take big deep breaths and center ourselves. When we were all done I checked in with the kids to see how they were feeling. I found them calm and centered. We even had a few moments of silence before they went off on their way which is saying something!

The book starts off with a bit about the elephant's history of yoga and then quickly catches up to modern-day Babar who describes how he uses yoga in his life. He offers multiple yoga routines with fun to see illustrations of an elephant doing yoga. My daughter enjoys setting up the book so she can follow the pictures and do yoga all by herself!

Shared On: Kid Lit Blog Hop, It's Playtime!, Kid's Get Crafty