Key Stage 2 Mindfulness activities

Ask the children to sit for one minute using a timer to time the children, and a chime or tap a singing bowl to tell the children when the activity has begun and ended.  Ask the children to take one minute to have a good look around the room and focus on their sense of sight.  Ask them to look for things they have never noticed before.  Tell them to look high and low and out of the window.  Then ask the children to put their hands up, and tell you what they have seen that they have not noticed before.  Explain to the children that although they are in the classroom environment most days of the week sometimes, we don’t consciously focus on our sight because our mind is thinking of other things.

Benefits:

Asking the children to take time out their day and stop and consciously focus on their sight quietens their monkey mind as they focus on their senses.  This activity develops children’s awareness and concentration.

Resources:

• Timer
• Chime or singing bowl

Using a snow globe ask the children to have a look at how the sprinkles move around and then fall to the bottom.  Explain that this can represent the mind.  Sometimes when we have lots of things to think about there are lots of thoughts moving around in our head just like when we shake the snow globe.   When we stop shaking the snow globe the sprinkles fall to the bottom and the globe is clear.  Our mind is clear just like this when we focus on our breathing or senses.  This is useful to use in most mindfulness activities to remind the children of how we all have a monkey mind and how this feels.

Benefits:

Children can visual how our monkey mind feels when we have lots of thoughts going through our head.  They can also visualise how this feels when we stop and focus on our breathing or senses.  We have different learning style so using the snow globe is effective for our visual learners.

Resources:

Snow globe

Using a range of sensory items to stimulate the sense of touch, such as elastic bands, water beads, spaghetti, leaves, gloop, shaving foam, playdough, and place the items into containers.  Choose one child to blindfold and give them an item to touch.  Ask the child what they think they can feel.  Ask the other children to say whether the child has guessed correctly.

Benefits:

This activity encourages children to focus on their sense of touch.  It stimulates the senses and develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness. 

Resources:

• Bag
• A range of items that stimulate our sense of smell
• Blindfold

Provide water beads in a container and ask the children to close their eyes and move their hands around the beads.  This activity can be used to relax the children whilst playing calming music or ask the children to describe the water beads and how touching them makes them feel.

Benefits:

During this activity the children’s senses are stimulated helping them to feel calm and relaxed.  It develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.

Resources:

• Water beads
• Container
• Water
• Calming music

Cut a range of coloured elastic bands and put them in a container.  The children can move their hands through the elastic bands, pulling, lifting and squeezing them.  This activity can be used to relax the children whilst playing calming music or ask the children to describe the elastic bands and how touching them makes them feel.

Benefits:

During this activity the children’s senses are stimulated helping them to feel calm and relaxed.  It develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.

Resources:

• Coloured elastic bands
• Container
• Calming music

To make gloop mix the ratio one cup of cold water with two cups of cornflour.  Use the hands to mix together.  This activity stimulates the sense of touch and helps relax the children.  The children can describe how it feels or listen to calming music whilst playing with the gloop.

Benefits:

During this activity the children’s senses are stimulated helping them to feel calm and relaxed.  It develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.

Resources:

• Water
• Cornflour
• Calming music

Provide the children with a tray and spray some shaving foam into the tray.  The children can then use their hands to stimulate their sense of touch by moving their hands around the foam and making letters, shapes and pictures with their fingers.

Benefits:

During this activity the children’s senses are stimulated helping them to feel calm and relaxed.  It develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.

Resources:

• Shaving foam
• Trays
• Calming music

Place a number of items onto a tray including small, large, different colours.  Ask the children to memorise the items.  Ask the children to look away while you take away one item and ask the children to tell you which item is missing.  To challenge the children, you can take more than one item away, add more items or move the items around.

Benefits:

This activity is a fun and engaging mindful activity as the children focus on their sense of sight. This develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.

Resources:

• A range of items
• Tray

Using a range of items to stimulate the sense of smell such as soap, toothpaste, flower, leaves etc.  Place the items into a bag.  Choose one child to blindfold and give them an item to smell.  Ask the child what they think the smell might be.  Ask the other children to say whether the child has guessed correctly.

Benefits:

This activity encourages children to focus on their sense of smell.  It stimulates the senses and develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness. 

Resources:

• Bag
• A range of items that stimulate our sense of smell
• Blindfold

Using a range of items to stimulate the sense of taste such as jelly, custard, rice, spaghetti etc.  Choose one child to blindfold and give them a taste.  Ask the child what they think the food might be.  Ask the other children to say whether the child has guessed correctly.

Benefits:

This activity encourages children to focus on their sense of taste.  It stimulates the senses and develops children’s focus, concentration and awareness.  Remember to check allergies!

Resources:

• Containers
• A range of foods that stimulate our sense of taste
• Blindfold
• Spoon

Give each child a raisin or a piece of popcorn.  Ask the child to place the raisin or popcorn in the palm of their hand.  In silence, ask them to have a really good look at their raisin/popcorn.  Ask them to think about the colours, shapes, and patterns they can see.  Take around one minute to have a good look at their raisin/popcorn.

Ask the children to have a smell of their raisin/popcorn, and think about whether it smells sweet/sour/nice/not so nice.  Ask the children if their mouth waters.  Take around one minute to smell the raisin/popcorn.

Ask the children to put the raisin/popcorn into their mouth and move it around with their tongue, without biting.  Ask them to think about what it feels like.  Does it feel hard/soft/smooth/rough/sweet/sour?

Ask the children to bite the raisin/popcorn and listen to the sound.  What does it sound like?

Ask individual children to discuss their sensory experience with the rest of the class.

Benefits:

During this focussed activity, the children are asked to concentrate on a range of senses.  This sensory activity allows children to concentrate, and develops sensory awareness.

Resources:

• raisin or popcorn

Using a chime or tap a singing bowl ask the children to sit and concentrate on their listening for one minute.  Explain that after one you will ask them what they could hear.  Ask individual children what they could hear during this time.  Depending on the age group you can give a specific number of things to listen for.  For example year 1 ask them what they can hear.  Year 3 listen for 2 different sounds. Year 6 listen for 5 different sounds.

Benefits:

This activity not only allows children to stop and concentrate it also allows children time out of their busy day.  By stopping and listening they are taking their monkey mind away from negative thoughts and focusing their attention on their sense of hearing.  This is a great activity when beginning a lesson or to help with behaviour when children need a break from their lesson. This stimulates their sense of awareness, reduces anxiety and develops cognitive development.

Resources:

• Chime or singing bowl

Ask the children to sit with a partner.  Give each partner either the number one or two. Number ones will be the listen, number twos will be the speaker.  Explain to the children the speaker has one minute to talk to their partner whilst the listener is not allowed to talk but to consciously listen.  After one minute I will ask the listener what the speaker has said.  Give the children examples such as what they did at the weekend, where they are going on holiday, talk about their pet, their best friend or family.  After one minute swap over and ask the listener and speaker to swap. 

Benefits:

This listening activity stimulates the sense of hearing.  This develops children’s awareness, self-confidence, speech and language and listening skills.  It allows children time to express themselves and build their self-esteem.  It encourages children to be independent, use their initiative and team building.

Resources:

• Chime or singing bowl

Choose a child to stand at the front of the class and choose a magic word.  Give examples such as the name of their pet, football club or friend.  The child will talk for one minute including using the magic word in their sentences.  The other children in the class will use a tally to record how many times the person said the magic word.  After one minute, ask the children how many times they thought they heard the magic word.

Benefits:

This fun, engaging and interactive listening game encourages self-confidence and team building.  It develops speech and language skills, awareness, concentration and focus. 

Resources:

• Chime or singing bowl
• Paper

Pen

Sit the children in a circle.  Ask the children to focus on their listening.  Start the clapping game by clapping and tapping in a rhythm.  For example clap the hands twice, tap the legs twice.  The child next to you will copy the clap and so on around the circle. 

Benefits:

• This interactive listening game improves concentration, listening skills, awareness, self-confidence, team building, taking turns and memory.

Sit the children in a circle.  Using Jenga blocks call out a child’s individual name to come and place a block on the floor.  Continue choosing individual children to place a block on top of the previous one.  Count how many blocks are placed before they fall to the ground.  See if you can beat that number on the next game.  The children must mindfully listen for their name.

Benefits:

This is a mindful listening game developing the children’s focus, concentration, turn taking, patience and self-esteem.  It also encourages children to work with numbers, developing hand/eye co-ordination.

Resources:

• Jenga blocks

Ask the children to stand up.  Using a timer ask the children to jump for 1 minute.  After 1 minute ask the children to stand still and place their hand on their heart.  Choose some children to explain how their body and heart feels.  Ask the children to take 10 slow deep breaths in and out through the nose.  Again choose children to explain how the heart and body feels now.  Explain to the children that when we are feeling anxious or worried their heart beats faster however this activity demonstrates the power of slow deep breathing and how it helps the body become much calmer and relaxed.

Benefits:

This activity is a good way for children to gain an understanding of how the breath helps us to feel much calmer and relaxed. By focusing on the breath when our heart is beating fast it enables us to relax ourselves and feel less anxious.  When we focus on deep breathing we are quietening the monkey mind.  This is due to our negative mind set impacting our emotions and then our bodies.  By focusing on the breath we are concentrating on the breath rather than negative thoughts which automatically allows us to feel calmer.

Resources:

No resources

Ask the children to stand barefoot in a large space.  Ask the children to close their eyes and take slow deep breaths in and out through nose taking their time to focus on different parts of the body.  Rolling the shoulders up and down, moving the head slowly from side to side and up and down, moving up and down onto the tiptoes, lifting the toes up and down off and onto the floor, lifting the arms and legs slowly up and down.  Ask the children to open their eyes and slowly and mindfully walk around the room as slow as they can.  Thinking about each step as they touch the floor with their heel and toes, thinking about the foot lifting off the ground and the other foot lowering.

Benefits:

This physical activity encourages children to slow down and become more mindful of their movement.  The activity increases children’s physical, spatial and body awareness, reducing anxiety.  Grounding activities allow the children to connect to the Earth and focus their mind on their sense of touch which reduces stress.

Resources:

No resources

Place a range of materials onto the floor in a line such as artificial grass, water in a tray, pebbles, large sponge and bubble wrap.  Ask the children to take turns walking barefoot through each material.  Ask the children what the materials feel like.

Benefits:

This grounding, sensory activity develops children’s balance, body awareness, self-confidence, cognitive development and reduces anxiety.  Grounding allows children to focus their mind on their senses rather than any negative thoughts.

Resources:

• A range of materials
• Blindfold

Walking barefoot ask the children to create a circle and walk around slowly.  While the children are walking talk about how the grass feels underneath their feet.  Ask the children to stop and lift their toes and wiggle, then lift their heels, raise one foot and then the other.  Talk to the children about how their feet feels on the grass.  Ask the children to stand still, close their eyes and focus on deep breathing in and out through the nose.

Benefits:

This grounding, walking meditation allows children to concentrate on their sense of touch.  It is a walking meditation as the children quiet their mind to focus on the breath and movement.  This activity improves anxiety, balance, physical development, awareness, concentration and focus.  This is a useful activity if children are feeling stressed in the classroom.

Resources:

No resources

Going outdoors with the children for a mindful walk or teaching outside asking the children to focus on their surroundings.  Discuss with the children about the different sounds they can hear, what they see, smell and touch.  Ask the children to focus on their slow deep breathing as they take in their environment.

Benefits:

Being outdoors quietens the mind and revitalises the body.  Taking deep breaths enables the children to concentrate on the breath helping develop lung capacity and reducing anxiety and stress. 

Resources:

No resources

Ask the children to write on a piece of paper a number of mindful questions such as

• 3 red items
• 3 sounds
• 2 smells
• 2 rough items
• 5 blue items
• 3 smooth items

You can challenge the children according to age by including more items, sounds, smells etc.  The children then go into the outdoor environment, answering each of the questions listed, writing down what they have found.  For example, 3 red items may be a bucket, flag and wheelbarrow.  Following the activity, the children can share their experience and findings with the rest of the class.  The children can either work in pairs, groups or individually.

Benefits:

This interactive activity improves concentration, focus, imagination, creativity, sensory stimulation and mathematics.  This builds self-confidence and improves relationships.

Resources:

• Paper
• Pen
• Outdoor area
• A range of items