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. What are feelings that you know or have felt? How do you feel when playing with your friends, your pet, when someone says something mean to you, when you are watching a movie you like, when you are ready for bed, when you think about yesterday when…, when you think about what will happen next week when …?  (Optional: feeling chart below)
2. Have you ever noticed what you are thinking in your mind when you are feeling happy, sad, bored, angry...?  
3. This  bottle is like our mind.
4. The glitter we will put in it are our thoughts and feelings.  (As you and/or your child put the glitter in the bottler, name the feelings that the glitter represent. Engage with them your thoughts and feelings for example when stuck in traffic when late for appointment, when reading your favorite book...). 
5. Let'shake the bottle. 
6.  Sometimes when we are feeling big emotions, it's really hard to be kind, pay attention or make a good choice.  We can't really think clearly.
7. Let's take a moment and bring all our attention on the glitter and the way it is swirling and slowly settling at the bottom of our bottle.
8. Watch the glitter, notice when you get distracted by thoughts, sounds around you, or sensations in your body. Bring your attention back to the glitter in motion.  
9. (Once glitter settles.)  What do  you notice? How are you feeling?
10. Thoughts and feelings are still there but settles. It's easier to make good choices, be kind and pay attention when we are calm, present and in the moment. 
11. When is a good time to use the mindful bottle?

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)