March is the first month of lovely Spring and I thought we should have a mindfulness lesson plan specially designed for this season. So, this month’s mindfulness for kids lesson plan will not only remind us of the importance of being mindful, it will also take us to a nature trip and to a trip to our inner-world.
There is also an introductory post where I’m explaining how, why and whats about mindfulness activities in the English classrooms.
If you already read the previous posts or don’t need extra information to apply mindfulness practices in your classroom, let’s jump directly into the new lesson plan.
March Mindfulness Activities Lesson Plan
This month we will be revising our favorite breathing techniques. As usual I will start my sessions with a deep breathing activity (if kids are more active than I was expecting I always start the session with a visual – like a video or a picture card).
We can go back to one of our first stories (in our October plan) “Breathe with me” and have a look at the breathing activities we have learnt so far.
We can watch some videos or have a look at all important resources which are also in our Mindfulness Bitmoji Classroom. Kids like to visit our Bitmoji classrooms and click on the things. I sometimes choose kids one by one to click on anything they want. During online lessons you can ask them what they want to click on and still make them feel a part of the virtual classroom visit activity.
Have you seen our Mindfulness Bitmoji Classroom? You can check it out and / or download a copy here: 7 different bitmoji classroom designs.
You can visit my Linktree and see all the other freebies I’ve uploaded.
Breathing activities are always a big part of our mindfulness sessions. But this month I’m not gonna teach them a new one, instead I want them to show more reasons and ways to use mindfulness in their daily life.
As I always say, if we want to teach kids something so abstract like being mindful; we need to visualize everything we can! That’s why I’m trying to include stories, videos, picture cards and poster as much as possible.
Kids already know lots of things to do whenever they feel stressed, sad, anxious or lonely; all of our lesson plans were specifically designed to teach them how to fight with these kinds of negative feelings and situations.
March will be the month of revising what we have learnt in the past 6 months and I wanted to visualize this with a cute poster which will remind us and show us some tips for being mindful whenever we need.
Mindfulness is my Superpower!
I can PAUSE and…
This poster says it all. I’m gonna print it and hang it in our classrooms. I will also send it to the parents so that they can also display it in their home.
I will also use it for speaking activities, of course. 🙂 We can talk about the pictures, we can dramatize the actions we can also create stories with them.
Click here to download the poster pdf.
These 2 songs I’v found are gonna be perfect support to this poster. They are great videos summarizing everything I wanna say. I cannot wait to use them in class!
Sometimes I get a little angry. When I can’t find my favorite toy. Sometimes I get a little angry. When I can’t find my favorite toy.
Then I stop. I close my eyes. And take a deep breath. ‘Cause everything is going to be… Alright.
So you gotta stop
Breathe in Breathe out
Just slow it all down
And listen to the sound
These 2 songs are what I needed for this month’s mindfulness lesson plan!
After revising lots and lots of things we have learnt so far, let’s do something special to welcome the first month of beautiful Spring.
Mindful Mandala
How about doing some mindful mandalas with the help of nature itself? We can take kids out for a walk in nature and collect as many items as we can (nothing that will harm nature of course) and create calming mandalas. We can do it individually or as a whole group activity.
We don’t have to use things from nature, we can use anything we can find around us like toys, blocks, puzzle pieces, pencils, figures, stationary items or even books! But if we insist on doing a nature mandala but can’t collect things from nature; we can create our own ones! We can draw, color, paint, cut and paste… to create our leaves, branches, stones, insects and flowers.
Open up some calming music, no talking allowed: Let’s just mandala!
Before doing this activity you may wanna show kids some examples. Because creating your own mandala is quite difficult if you haven’t done it before and you are a little child not ready for such an abstract thinking and designing activity.
Here are couple of my favorite videos: The first ones are mandalas made with nature items. Nature is the Art Store – Nature Mandala, Found Object Art: Nature Art, Nature Art. These are mandalas made with everyday objects. “Found Object Mandala” – COOL BEANS CLUB! – At Home Art with Mrs. K, Mandala with found objects, Found Objects Mandala.
Even if you are not gonna use one of these techniques, I suggest you to have kids watch them all or at least show them some parts of these videos to get them inspired.
I think that’s it for now 🙂
So,
Keep Calm and don’t forget to PAUSE whenever you need ^_^
