Summer Mindfulness Challenge – Week 4

With the summer holidays now over halfway gone, it can be hard to keep up the entertainment. So this week is all about games and fun. These are all ideas that you can do as a family or with a group of friends so have fun and stay mindful!

You can download a worksheet of all these activities here. Don’t forget to record your reflections in your journal!

Put a few (familiar!) tactile items in a bag such as a rock, shell, ribbon. Invite your child to put their hand in the bag, pick an item and describe it without taking it out or looking at it. Can they guess what it is?!

I love this mindful eating game. Gather some yummy snacks onto a plate, or using your meal, pretend that you are going to invite an alien to dinner. You need to write a description of the food they’ll get, because the alien has never seen it before! Using all the senses, including taste, describe all the items on the plate.

Yes, Jenga is a fantastic mindful game for the whole family. Not only is it almost impossible to get a brick out if you’re not concentrating completely, it’s also helpful to practice your relaxation breathing skills to help steady your hand. For older children, you can also invite them to pay attention to whatever it is that distracts them from the game.

You know the game, when Simon gives the instruction “Simon says” you copy what they’re doing but when they give an instruction and action without saying “Simon says”, you don’t do it. This game helps to demonstrate how easy it can be to act without thinking.

For those unfamiliar with children’s yoga, it can be helpful to use a pack of children’s yoga cards for this game. Choose a pose and give the instruction that when the music stops, they have to hold the pose. Change the pose for each time the music stops. Invite them to reflect of how the pose makes them feel, calm? strong? brave? relaxed?

A great game for helping children gain greater insight to the relationship between mind and body. Invite them to move around the room according to the emotion that you shout out. Encourage them to reflect on the different way they moved for each emotion and whether any thoughts popped in their minds as they were moving.

This is a lovely task to do in a group, but can be done 1:1 as well. Gather some pictures, landscapes are often best for this activity. Invite the children to study the picture very carefully for one minute. Then they have to turn the picture over and describe it to the others. For younger children, ask them to choose 5 things they want to tell others about the picture. For groups, only have a couple of pictures it’s amazing the different descriptions that are given for the same picture pictures. It can provide a helpful discussion point about how we all see the same thing differently.