Activity for Children, Pre-teens and Teens

1. A visual, creative and fun way to teach mindfulness to children. 
2. Helps to calm down and regulate emotions. Practice alone or with friends and family!
3. Opportunity to encourage self awareness and emotional literacy by identifying and understanding what they are feeling or help them figure out what others might be feeling. 
4. Straighten focus and attention by practicing coming back to now, to the present moment when mind wanders.

1. Think about a time when you were really mad or upset; what did you feel like?
2. Okay, let’s shake up the jar really fast!!
3. That’s what our mind is like when we are really mad or upset.
4. Thoughts we may have about being mean or saying mean words are all over!
5. When we feel big emotions, it's really hard to be kind and make good choices for ourselves and others. We can't really think clearly.
6. We can calm down those angry thoughts and our body; instead of acting or talking in a way that would hurt people’s feelings and that we may get in trouble or feel bad about afterwards.
7. Let's take a moment and practice some mindful breathing and watch what happens to the swirling glitter. It is swirling and slowly settling at the bottom of our bottle.
8. It's easier to make good choices and be kind when our thoughts are settled; we are calm, present and in the moment.
9.  When we take some deep breaths, it helps our mind to quiet down, and it’s easier to work out problems and talk about whatever it is that is causing us to be upset.
10. We all sometimes may feel mad; it’s part of life. What is important is how we respond, how we express being mad.
11. When is a good time to use mindful breathing with the mindful glitter bottle? 

Encouraging kids to practice mindful breathing with the glitter jar when they are calm will help them to use their mindful breathing at times when they are not.

1. Take pictures of your child making different faces as they name different feelings. Print, cut, paste and write the feelings each face represents underneath the photo. Create your own poster.

2. Find different free images online. Print, cut, paste and write the feelings each face represents underneath the photo. Create your own poster.

3. Free download of feeling chart.

4. Watch movie” Inside Out”together and connect colors and themes for your jar. Movie trailer below.

“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment,

there’s a 90-second chemical process that happens; any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”    

 “If you continue to feel fear, anger, and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking that are re-stimulating the circuitry that is resulting in you having this physiological reaction, over and over again.”

- Harvard brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (Ted Talk)