Cultivating Calm: Mindfulness & The Senses for Children

This term at Joyful Journeys we have been focusing deeply on our senses and how they can help us with our focus and being entirely present during the class. Teaching mindfulness with yoga enables children by giving them valuable skills and tools to navigate many of life's challenges. By engaging the senses we encourage children to pay attention to their sensory experiences and foster a deeper connection to the present moment and create a sense of calm, improving focus and helping with anxiety and stress. Lets explore more benefits of introducing mindfulness to children and how each sense can be utilised for mindfulness.

The Benefits of Mindfulness for Children:

1. Emotional Regulation: Mindfulness empowers children to recognize and manage their emotions more effectively, fostering greater emotional resilience.

2. Improved Concentration: By training attention and focus, mindfulness helps children enhance their concentration skills, leading to better academic performance and overall cognitive development.

3. Stress Reduction: Mindfulness practices promote relaxation and reduce stress levels in children, providing them with essential coping mechanisms for life's inevitable challenges.

4. Enhanced Self-Awareness: Through mindfulness, children develop a heightened awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, fostering a deeper understanding of themselves and their experiences.

5. Increased Empathy and Compassion: By learning to be present with their own experiences, children develop a greater capacity for empathy and compassion towards others, nurturing positive social relationships.

Here's how you could use Mindfulness & the senses for children at home!

Sight:

• Activity: Take a mindful walk in nature. Encourage children to notice the colours, shapes, and movements around them without judgment.

• Benefits: Enhances appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, promotes visual acuity, and cultivates a sense of wonder and curiosity.

Hearing:

• Activity: Practice mindful listening. Sit quietly and focus on the sounds around you, whether it's birds chirping, leaves rustling, or distant traffic.

• Benefits: Sharpens auditory perception, teaches active listening skills, and fosters a sense of tranquillity amidst noise.

Touch:

• Activity: Engage in a tactile exploration. Provide various textured objects like smooth stones, soft fabrics, and rough bark for children to touch mindfully.

• Benefits: Enhances sensory awareness, stimulates the tactile senses, and promotes a sense of grounding and comfort.

Taste:

• Activity: Practice mindful eating. Encourage children to savour a small piece of food slowly, paying attention to its flavour, texture, and sensation in their mouths.

• Benefits: Cultivates mindful eating habits, heightens appreciation for food, and fosters a healthy relationship with eating.

Smell:

• Activity: Create a scent exploration. Introduce various scents like flowers, herbs, or spices and encourage children to notice the subtle differences in each aroma.

• Benefits: Stimulates olfactory senses, promotes relaxation and mood regulation, and enhances sensory memory.
  

Sample Mindfulness Activities for Each Sense:

1. Sight: Nature Scavenger Hunt - Provide children with a list of items to find in nature and encourage them to observe their surroundings mindfully as they search.

2. Hearing: Sound Mapping - Have children draw a map of their environment, marking the different sounds they hear in each location. Sound On Game - play a sound using chimes or sound bowls and ask your child to raise their hand when the sound stops.

3. Touch: Sensory Bin Exploration - Create a sensory bin filled with various materials like rice, sand, or dried beans for children to explore with their hands. For older children make this into a descriptive language game to describe what they are feeling and have you guess the object.

4. Taste: Mindful Snack Time - Have children choose a small snack and guide them through a mindful eating exercise, focusing on each bite's taste, texture, and sensation.

5. Smell: Scented Art - Provide children with scented markers or crayons and encourage them to create artwork while paying attention to the aromas. Scent match game - using cotton wool balls and essential oils ask your child to match the cotton wool ball to the correct essential oil bottle.
   

The 5-4-3-2-1 game!

This game is great for bringing all of the senses together! It is a wonderful game for when your children are a little worried or anxious as it really helps to focus your mind. I even use this game myself to calm my mind. All you need to do is work through your senses finding things in numbers from 5 to 1.

Example: Look around you and notice 5 things. Close your eyes and Listen for 4 things. Focus on your skin and notice 3 things you can Feel. Take a deep breath and notice 2 things you can Smell. And finally, relax your tongue and notice the Taste of your mouth.

Incorporating mindfulness practices into children's lives can lay the foundation for a lifetime of well-being and resilience. By engaging their senses mindfully, we can help children develop essential skills for navigating life with calmness, clarity, and compassion.

Here's some photos from our classes this term! Next term we will be exploring 'Spaces & Places in Spring!' To book head over to the booking page and don't forget, you can get your first class for free using the code 'FIRSTCLASS'.