Mindful Crafts & Activities For Happy Kids

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!

Meditation Friends

Inspired by the excitement over the snowglobes we made earlier this year, I decided we should try another watery glitter project.  This one has a different purpose than to capture a bit of whimsical winter in a bottle.  Taking a cue from one of my family's favorite books, Peaceful Piggy Meditation, we decided to make special meditation jars with personality!

This was a simple happy project.  First we read our Piggy Meditation book.  We talked about how sometimes our minds just won't stop thinking or maybe we feel really sad or angry.  We talked about how taking a few deep breaths and finding a calm place inside ourselves can help us to feel better.  Then I showed the kids a Meditation Friend that I had made as an example for our project.   I shook it up and explained that the glitter swirling around inside is like our thoughts when they are overwhelming or angry or sad.  Next we took a few deep breaths while watching the glitter settle down in the jar, and while feeling our thoughts settle inside our minds.  We played with the Meditation Friend pretending it was mad or just had too many thoughts by shaking it up and then we helped our friend calm down with some big, deep breaths.

After our discussion each kid made their own Meditation Friend.

What you need to make your own ~

• Bottle or Jar with water tight lid (I used plastic water bottles to prevent breakage but glass would work fine as well.)
• Water
• Glitter or Glitter Glue (Glitter glue will make it take longer for the "thoughts" to settle down.  Use warm water if you choose to use glue)
• Googly Eyes
• Decorations (We used peel and stick foamies)
• Ribbon or Yarn
• Fabric Scraps

Simply place water and glitter in the bottle and secure shut.  Then have the child decorate their bottle to look like a face with googly eyes and any other materials you have on hand.  I used peel and stick foamies because, well, they are easy!  Then give the new friend a hat by securing a piece of cloth on top of the bottle with ribbon or yarn.  Easy Peasy!

 In the days following this project, I had a number of the students who made these tell me that they used it when they felt sad or lonely or mad and, that it helped!  Yeah!

Please Note:  This activity was based on an activity at the end of this amazing, fun book.  My six-year-old loves this book.  We re-read it often when she is going through a hard time in her life and it seems to really speak to her.

Peaceful Piggy Meditation

Shared On: Kid Lit Blog Hop