‘Unprecedented times’ – it’s a phrase you’ve likely heard more in the past few weeks that in your lifetime. Children of any age can feel anxious. With such disruption to normal life, how can you prevent your children from feeling overwhelmed? In this post we aim to bring you 4 easy ways that you can help your children be mindful and introduce mindfulness to children.
Be alone together with mindful colouring
You may have noticed that we LOVE colouring on this site, but it is a wonderful mindful activity as well. We have so many opportunities for colouring with our kids. Why not take a look at sitting down and being present with your children using some of our resources? We’ve got cats, hippos, unicorns and even dinosaurs to help you out. All of our colouring has a simpler version for younger children, as well as a more complicated one for adults, or older kids.
If you want – we also have a colouring book on Amazon you can take a look at too.
Don’t forget to breathe
There’s no denying that the current situation is stressful, and it’s tough to introduce mindfulness to children if it’s not a part of your own life. Feeling tense? Why not get your little ones involved some simple breathing exercises that you can do together? This helps bring awareness to the breath and body.
It can seem like a challenge to get children to practice their breathing, but there’s some fun ways of doing it for all ages. From pretending to be a fish blowing bubbles, to becoming the big bad wolf blowing the house down, or even blowing up a make believe balloon – it’s all about being creative and finding a way that works for you to help your children be mindful.
You can learn more about other grounding exercises in a recent post we featured from Mari’s World as part of our 31 Days of Learning series.
Make meal time about more than eating
Found yourself getting into the banana bread baking craze? There’s never been a better time to get your child stuck into any baking or cooking you’re doing.
There’s no denying that it will take longer than usual, but getting them to focus on some simple tasks can help to stop any anxious thoughts that may be buzzing along in their minds.
The repetitiveness of whisking, kneading and stirring are all great examples – and the feeling of seeing and tasting the final result makes it a rewarding effort.
Need some inspiration? We’ve got loads of recipes available here.
Play along with some mindfulness activities
There are apps available that can help children to de-stress and unwind; useful skills both in these tough times and for later in life.
One of these is the CBeebies Go Explore app, which has recently added a new mindfulness activity. Developed with a mindfulness consultant and voiced by Stephen Fry, Your Mindful Garden lets little ones discover three fun activities each day that introduce focus, creativity and calm.
Whether it’s playing hide and seek with the CBeebies bugs or helping some friendly fish to pick up colourful scales – the focus activities aid concentration, and in turn help to clear and relax the mind. The creative activities include recalling happy memories to grow a feelings flower, or calming the mind by raking patterns in a zen garden.
The final activity of each day is always something calming. From learning to stretch with a new monkey friend to breathing along with a frog; it’s all about learning valuable techniques that can help improve children’s wellbeing.
You can download the Go Explore app here via the Apple, Google Play and Amazon app stores.
We have a few other activities, and advice articles on mindfulness on the site, as it is a key focus for us. Why not take a look?
Mindfulness resources for kids
These mindfulness resources for kids are great resources to help you and your kids stay in the moment and live in the now.
Mindful art activities for children #31DaysOfLearning
Art activities that help kids to be mindful and stay in the moment.
10 ways mindfulness can help you be a better parent
Mindfulness for YOU so you can help your child better.
Free hippo mindful coloring pages: Buy our coloring book for adults and kids on Amazon today
Our hippo mindfulness colouring pages both for you and for your children.
How to help your kids mental health and wellbeing #31DaysOfLearning
Exercises to help your children be more mindful, including an excellent breathing exercise.
Free worry tree to help ease your kids fears
This is a brilliant tool to help kids talk about and "get rid of" their worries.
We trust you find this article on how to help your children be mindful helpful. If you do, why not sign up to our newsletter for more great articles?
Thanks as always for stopping by to see us all.
Take care,
Helen
Note: This is NOT a paid for article, we liked the app from the BBC (as well as thinking Stephen Fry is awesome) so we thought it was worth a mention as part of a wider focus on helping kids be more mindful.
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine! Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania. Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on. Get in touch TODAY!