Here is the October Mindfulness Activities Lesson Plan for English lessons! This is the second plan that I’m sharing after this one.
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 these posts or don’t need extra information to apply mindfulness practices in your classroom, let’s jump directly into the new lesson plan.
October Mindfulness Activities Lesson Plan
Before any mindfulness activity please be sure that kids are in comfortable positions. You can have them sit on the carpet, on cushions or you can tell them to sit up and relax their muscles to breathe easily.
Recently, I’ve started to use a bell to get their attentions. When they hear it they know that I’m gonna start our mindfulness session with a breathing activity or any other calming one like body scanning.
If you don’t have a bell or bowl, you can always download a “mindfulness bell app” to your mobile phone. It doesn’t give the same affect but it can be better than nothing 🙂
Last month I’ve used the Square Breathing activity for the warm up. It’s a perfect starter. You show kids the video and they visualize the whole breathing process. Lovely.
This month I’ve used something similar to square breathing. There is a cute balloon fish which helps us to breathe in and out by moving up and down.
Now kids and me are relaxed and ready for our new story: Breathe with Me: Using Breath to Feel Strong, Calm, and Happy written by Mariam Gates – illustrated by Sarah Jane Hinder.
Story: Breathe With Me
“Breathe with Me guides young ones through six guided breathing meditation exercises. Through visualization and play, this engaging breath-by-breath journey teaches children an essential set of self-care skills that will benefit them for a lifetime.”
As it says in the description under the story video on YouTube; with this lovely story I’ve been teaching 5 different breathing techniques to my students and lots of other super useful vocabulary.
Here are the 5 different breathing techniques you can see in the read-aloud video:
- Rainbow Breath
- Dandelion Breath
- Counting Breath
- Belly Breath
- Balloon Breath
Can you guess how many words, structures and phrases you can teach only by looking at these titles?
Yes, many…
Here is what I did: I didn’t let kids watch the story once. I have stopped and talked about every page in the book. I had to simplify the sentences and visualize the most important things by using lots of body language 😀
When I reached the first breathing technique “Rainbow Breath” I stopped there again and invited kids to do the activity with me. When we did it the lesson was over already! 😀
Just like I’ve done for the “Bee Calm: The Buzz on Yoga” story which I used in my first mindfulness lesson plan, I’ve created story puppets for this story, too.
Why am I using story puppets in my mindfulness lessons?
Because you need to visualize everything! 😀 For sure it helps you a lot while working with young and very young students. Also, story puppets – visuals give you more flexibility, like you don’t need to open the story video every time you need kids to see or remember the story.
Plus, it is also super useful for your online lessons. You don’t have to share your screen, you just show kids the pictures and that’s it!
Here is the pdf file of the story puppets I’ve created. These are just pictures from the story. Not a big deal 😀 Print them our, cut and paste on some sticks ta daa!
Have you seen our Mindfulness Bitmoji Classroom? You can check it out with my 7 different bitmoji classroom designs. Or you can visit my Linktree and download a copy of this lovely room <3
or you can visit it in preview mode to view the latest changes without downloading a copy to your computer.
Thank you for being here…
