Mindfulness Exercises for Young Children
Preparing to Teach Children Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind
Instructors should practice stillness and calm before guiding children. One goal for each instructor is to act as both a guide and co-learner. This approach is easier to understand through hands-on practice and visible cues rather than a textbook. Children learn best when they actively participate.
Rituals and routines also support them. Helpful practices include:
i) Designate a quiet corner where a child can retreat if feeling overwhelmed.
ii) Play soft, calming music in the background during lessons.
iii) Incorporate outdoor time or lessons that take place outdoors.
Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Five-Seven Year Olds
At this age children begin to verbalize thoughts, judge themselves, imitate adults, and develop coping strategies through play. They follow instructions well when they feel encouraged, concentrate on quiet activities for about 20 minutes, and enjoy routines and rituals.
Exercise 1: Getting Relaxed and Muscle Relaxation
1) Help the children realize what their body feels like when it is calm versus when it is stressed.
2) Guide them to breathe deeply into their bellies so the body relaxes.
3) Progressively tense and release different muscles in their bodies.
4) Start with a brief moment of silence to build mental concentration.
5) Instructors breathe together with the child and describe how it feels.
6) Prompt the child to notice their own breath and explain it back.
7) After the body relaxing exercise, ask the child to describe how their legs feel or which part is the hardest to relax.
8) Let them draw or write about the experience; this reinforces the memory and sparks creativity.
9) For homework, children could try this exercise at home and record (write or draw) their experience explaining how much easier or harder the exercise was compared to when they did it in class.
Exercise 2: Mindfulness
1) Teach children to notice what happens as it happens, using the breath as an anchor.
2) Remind them that any arising thoughts, feelings, or bodily sensations are normal and accepted.
3) If the mind wanders however, gently guide the child back to the breath.
4) Start the exercise by playing I-Spy. Begin with simple objects and clear descriptions. As you go, gradually increase difficulty with more complex clues.
5) After the instructor’s turn, let the child choose the next object.
6) After I-Spy, give the child a small piece of food. Ask them to describe its look, feel, and smell, then eat it and note taste, mouthfeel, and other observations.
7) Finally, end with a quiet period where children listen to the room’s sounds. Let them describe what they hear while also focusing on their breath if they don’t hear anything.
Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Eight-Eleven Year Olds
At this age children are energetic and have active imaginations, learn best by having new skills and lessons broken down to singular steps, require a lot of positive feedback, enjoy having conversations with adults and teaching adults things they didn’t know, need to know why they are doing something they are told is important.
Exercise 1: Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Ask them to explain what their special place looks like. Is there any sounds or smells that they notice in that place? After doing this ask them to come back to reality and explain how their body feels, how fast their heart is beating, how calm they feel.
Now ask them to take themselves to a time where they were upset, stressed or scared. It may help for the instructor to do the same thing with them.
Ask them how they felt in that moment, what does their body feel like while recalling that memory? Explain to them how better they felt thinking about a calming place than a stressful one.
Give them the a checkbox sheet that the children can use to identify what they feel like when they are stressed.
Explain that paying attention to how we breath goes a long way in quieting our mind and relaxing our body when we are stressed.
Practice abdominal breathing with the children. Tell them to focus on their belly going up and down as practice for focusing on the now.
Both the instructor and the children should write down in a journal what they fought of the exercise and share them with the class of they feel like it.
Paying Attention: Mindfulness
After completing this, the instructor should move on to more challenging tasks like doing it on one foot or blinking one eye at a time while doing it.
The next game is trying to balance two books on top of the head and walk across to the other side of the room. The goal is for the child to realise that if they do the task slower, they will reach success quicker.
The mindfulness breathing exercise also works with this age group. The instructor could try extending the time or asking more complex questions about the exercise in order to meet the intelligence of this age group.
Ask the children to write down their experiences in their journal and the teacher should make their experiences down in theirs too.
For homework, the child could try to focus on a task they do at home and write down everything that is happening in that exact moment.
Exercises to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind for Twelve Year Olds and Up
This age group have a strong need to make their own reasons for completing a task rather than someone telling them why they are doing something, suffer with a fragile self-esteem and need encouragement from adults, struggle to belong and want to be a part of a group, notice hypocrisy in adults and are less likely to do something an adult tells them of they don’t do it themselves, sensitive about their bodies due to puberty, thrive on rituals and want independence.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Body Scan
Start the exercise by asking the child about something stressful they have gone through, the teacher should share the same thing.
Then define what stress is and mention how it isn’t bad to be stressed and how it is simply an emotion that will pass. It also needs to be mentioned that people experience stress is different ways, not everyone goes through it the same way.
Abdominal breathing also works for this age group as it is a good way to de-stress the Body and the mind. The teacher should explain the benefits and ask the child to focus on how they breath.
Explain that deep breathing is healthy for us and that when we are stressed out, we sometimes breath rapidly which only prolongs our stress.
Ask the students to focus their attention on one body part at a time and put all of their energy into flexing that part of the body than release it.
After doing this, ask the child how it felt after releasing the stress and what body parts it was easy with and which ones it was hard with.
Ask them to write their experiences in their journal and the teacher should show them their journal so they see they are not the only ones doing it.
Ask the child if they feel comfortable sharing the journal, and if they don’t it is important not to force them to. The teacher should try to share theirs though so the student sees that it isn’t a big deal to share what is written.
Paying Attention: Mindfulness
After the time is up, cover the tray and ask the students to write down as many objects as they remember. If they do not do well, take another 15 objects and try it again with them. Most of the time they will do better on the second attempt.
The next game will be slowly eating an orange and focusing on what is tastes like, how hard or easy it is to peel, what it seems like, feels like and anything else that involves the orange. Do this exercise for about 3 mins. They cannot speak during this time and must try to completely focus on the task.
After the time is up, ask the child about the experience. Was it hard to focus so long on one task? What did you notice about the orange that you never paid attention to before?
Lastly, ask the child to sit still and allow their thoughts to go where they may. It is important to explain that they shouldn’t judge the faults as bad or good, just thoughts. After the time limit, ask them how many thoughts they can remember and share some with the teacher.