25 Fun Mindfulness Activities and Exercises for Children and Teens

“In today’s rush, we all think too much — seek too much — want too much — and forget about the joy of just being” (Eckhart Tolle).

Mindfulness can add to the quality of our lives in numerous ways, from nurturing a sense of inner peace to improving the quality of a workout, from enhancing self-confidence to facilitating deeper and more meaningful relationships with others.

In children specifically, mindfulness has been found to:

It’s important for caregivers and educators to provide age-appropriate mindfulness practices for children.

Fostering mindfulness through small tools such as pictures, objects, food, simple movements, and music for preschoolers can help them develop an ability to focus attention at a great level.

For instance, in a study by Flook et al., (2015), they had an activity called ‘’Belly Buddies’’ in which kids listened to music while being asked to notice the sensation of small tone on their stomachs rising and falling as they breathe. Simple activities like these can have long-lasting developmental benefits when practiced regularly.

To get started, check out the fun mindfulness activities designed specifically for children below.

Oh, and enjoy! These exercises are extremely fun to do with kids.

Mindfulness X is a complete, 8-session mindfulness training template for helping professionals.

It includes everything you need to deliver a high-quality mindfulness training that is science-based.

Start now to help others to improve their lives in meaningful ways.

4 Fun Mindfulness Activities and Exercises for Children

Mindful Posing

One easy way for children to dip their toes into mindfulness is through the simple method of body poses. To get your kids interested, tell them that doing fun poses can help them feel strong, brave, and happy.

Have them go somewhere quiet and familiar, a place they feel safe. Next, tell them to try one of the following two poses:

Spidey Senses

While you’re on the subject of superheroes, there is a fun and easy way to introduce your kids to paying attention to the present.

Instruct your kids to turn on their “Spidey senses”, the super-focused senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch that Spiderman uses to keep tabs on the world around him. This will encourage them to pause and focus their attention on the present, opening their awareness to the information their senses bring in (Karen Young, 2017).

This is a classic mindfulness exercise, packaged in a fun and easy to understand format that kids will find no difficulty in trying out.

The Mindful Jar

This activity can teach children about how strong emotions can take hold, and how to find peace when these strong emotions come up.

“Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you’re stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That’s why it’s so easy to make silly decisions when you’re upset – because you’re not thinking clearly. Don’t worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grownups too).

[Now put the jar down in front of them.]

Now watch what happens when you’re still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you’re calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer” (Karen Young, 2017).

This exercise not only helps children learn about how their emotions can cloud their thoughts, it also facilitates the practice of mindfulness while focusing on the swirling glitter in the jar.

The Safari exercise is another fun way to help kids learn mindfulness. This activity turns an average, everyday walk outside into an exciting new adventure.

Tell your kids that you will be going on a safari, and their goal is to notice as many birds, bugs, creepy-crawlies, and any other animals as they can. Anything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies is of interest, and they’ll need to focus all of their senses to find them, especially the little ones (Karen Young, 2017).

A similar exercise for adults is the mindfulness walk. This exercise provokes the same response in children that the mindful walk brings out in adults: a state of awareness and grounding in the present.

If you’re interested in more information on how to encourage the practice of mindfulness in children and teens, you can check out the other exercises from this website. Otherwise, head on to the next section where we lay out some tips that you may find helpful.

15 Tips for Teaching Mindfulness to Kids and Teenagers

When you are trying to teach your kids or young clients about what mindfulness is and how it can benefit them, it’s best to start off with a few simple guidelines:

Megan Cowan, co-founder, and co-director at the Mindful Schools program in Oakland, also has some tips on how to successfully teach mindfulness to kids (2010):

Cowan (2010) also includes a short script if you’d like to use her mini-lesson.

Relay the following instructions to your kids:

For more in-depth tips and ideas on teaching mindfulness to children, check out the book Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community. The website from editor and children’s book author Annaka Harris also provides some great ideas for exercises that teach mindfulness to children.

8 Mindfulness Games, YouTube Videos, and Apps to Support Your Teachings

Technology is having a profound impact on learning and development, sometimes in a positive direction and sometimes by bringing new challenges. To ensure that you are using technology to your advantage when it comes to teaching children mindfulness, give some of these resources a try.

Mindfulness for Children: Meditations for Kids

This is an application that can be downloaded through the Android app store, iTunes, Google Music, or the Apple app store, with multiple versions available. There are a few versions that must be purchased and one free version, which offers fewer conveniences than the paid versions.

This app is centered around guided meditation that is designed to help children wind down before bed. It includes relaxing nature sounds and instructions in a plain language that children can easily understand. The app can guide the user through a body scan, visualizations, and breathing exercises.

Reviews for this app have been positive, and the developers report that parents have seen some reduction in ADHD symptoms through using this app.

For more information or to give this app a try, visit the website.

Smiling Minds App

Another application that is popular for children as young as 7 is the Smiling Mind app. This app is available through the Apple app store as well as the Google Play store and is free to download and use.

This app offers similar features to the Mindfulness for Children app, including a body scan activity. There are dozens of modules with hundreds of sessions available, customized for well-being, education, and the workplace (for adults).

If you’d like to check out the reviews for this app or learn more about it, visit the website.

Still Quiet Place

If you’d like to use a video to help your kids learn how to engage in mindfulness, the Mindfulness Exercises for Kids: Still Quiet Place video is a great resource. This animated video includes cute characters, fun colors, and imagery, and can help students learn how to go to a “still quiet place.”

Check out the video here, and scroll down to the link below the video to see more activities from GoZen.com.

Mindfulness Games for Kids

If you want to try to get kids interested in practicing mindfulness with fun and interactive games, try these ideas from the Kids Activities Blog:

If you want to know about more games you can play with children to teach them about mindfulness, check out the book Mindful Games: Sharing Mindfulness and Meditation with Children, Teens, and Families by Susan Kaiser Greenland.

3 Mindfulness Training Classes For Children with Anxiety

Mindfulness practice can be an especially important component of a child’s life if they suffer from anxiety. Learning about mindfulness and how to engage in mindfulness can help a child realize that while a little bit of worrying is normal, there are useful coping methods and strategies to decrease anxiety based on mindfulness.

Aside from the Mindful Schools program mentioned earlier, there are some classes and programs designed especially for children, and even a few that are structured for children dealing with anxiety.

While a course isn’t strictly necessary for teaching children mindfulness, it can be a great help to have a format, lessons, and exercises laid out in an easy-to-administer package.

The Basics: Teaching Essential Mindfulness Practices and Skills

Mindful Breathing

Mindful breathing is a staple of practicing mindfulness and is often the foundation of other exercises. To help kids learn how to engage in mindful breathing, you can use a video like the one below:

This video guides children through a breathing meditation by instructing them to imagine a sailboat that rises and falls as they breathe; with each inhale and exhale, the boat moves gently on top of the water. They also get an opportunity to envision their breath as a color and focus on the experience of their breath moving through their nostrils.

Finally, the video ends with the exercise of the children pretending they used to be a fish and paying attention to how it would feel to breathe through their lungs for the first time.

Body Scan

The body scan is one of the basic practices in mindfulness, and it is an easy one to teach to children.

This simple exercise gets kids to be more aware of their bodies and helps them find a way to be present in the moment.

Heartbeat Exercise

Paying attention to one’s heartbeat has a role in many mindfulness exercises and activities. Kids can learn how to apply this mindfulness practice to their own lives as well.

Tell your kids to jump up and down in place or do jumping jacks for one minute. When they have finished, have them sit down and put a hand over their heart. Instruct them to close their eyes and pay attention only to their heartbeat and, perhaps, their breath as well (Roman, 2015).

This easy exercise shows children how to notice their heartbeat and helps them practice their focus. These skills will come in handy as they start engaging in more advanced mindfulness activities.

Mindfulness Meditation for Very Young Children

You might be thinking that these tips and exercises could be excellent for teaching mindfulness in elementary or middle school, and you’re right! These are wonderful resources for helping a child discover the benefits of mindfulness.

But you can start even sooner than elementary school when it comes to teaching mindfulness. Some mindfulness exercises can even be started before Kindergarten!

For example, one blogging mother laid out her five strategies for teaching young children mindfulness, which she has used with a child as young as three.

Her strategies are:

The Benefits Of Mindfulness In Schools (K12) + Videos

Childhood and adolescence are important developmental stages that construct the groundwork for mental health in adults. In recent literature, mindfulness-based school programs using age-appropriate techniques have demonstrated a range of social, cognitive, and emotional benefits for elementary and middle-school students.

Cognitive Benefits

Executive function is a set of mental skills that constitutes attention, switching focus, planning, organizing and remembering details. Research in education suggests that mindfulness practice can lead to improvements in executive function in children. For instance, in the study of Flook et al., (2010) conducted on 3^rd graders, students who went through an 8-week mindfulness program showed significant improvements in behavioral regulation, metacognition and focus compared to the controls group who didn’t go through the mindfulness program.

In another study, students who went through a 24-week of mindfulness training also scored higher in attentional measures after the intervention in elementary school (Napoli et al., 2004). In another recent study conducted on preschoolers, children who went through mindfulness curriculum for 12 weeks earned higher marks on academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success (Flook et al., 2015).

Social Benefits

A social skill is any skill that we use to interact and communicate with others. Deficits and excesses in social behavior can affect learning, understanding, and the classroom climate. A recent research conducted on lower-income and ethnic minority elementary school children show that a 5-week mindfulness curriculum can lead to better participation in activities and caring and respect for others in 9th-grade children (Black et al., 2013).

Emotional Benefits

Emotional health, which is a positive sense of well-being, is an important component of child and adolescent development. Emotional problems such as anxiety, stress, and depression can affect self-esteem, performance, and social interaction to a great extent in students. Recent findings suggest that mindfulness practice may facilitate the ability to manage stress and lead to improved well-being in students.

According to a study by Schonert-Reichl and his colleagues (2010), mindfulness practice leads to higher scores on self-report measures of optimism and positive emotions in elementary school students. Moreover, in a study conducted by Wall (2005), self-reported findings showed children feeling calmer, had an enhanced experience of well-being, and improved sleep after a 5-week modified mindfulness-based stress reduction program in 11-13 years of age.

Videos on Mindfulness in Schools

A Take Home Message

Plenty of research shows that mindfulness is capable of improving mental health and well-being, attention, self-regulation, and social competency when well taught and practiced in children and adolescents.

Introducing mindfulness-based programs in schools and in everyday practice can have a life-long impact on the psychological, social, and cognitive well-being of children and teens. So go out and help your child to practice and enjoy simple mindfulness exercises when they are young.

Children as young as pre-school age have successfully completed mindfulness exercises and enjoyed their experiences as well.

Do you have kids or work with kids on a regular basis? Try these tips and activities out, and let us know how they worked in the comments section below.

Good luck, and remember this old saying:

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Mindfulness in Schools references:

Related Posts