Focussing and Calming Games for Children: Mindfulness Strategies and Activities to Help Children to Relax, Concentrate and Take Control

Focus, mindfulness, relaxation and concentration are key elements of achieving emotional well-being, and are also important for a child's development of skills and abilities. Focussing and Calming Activities for Children helps children to build social, emotional and spiritual well-being. Part One covers the theoretical and practical background. It illustrates how the capacity to calm oneself, focus attention and concentrate can help a child build specific skills and abilities and regulate themselves, and demonstrates the importance of play and imagination. It also sets out how to structure the emotional environment. Part Two is made up of games and activities that teach children how to develop these mindfulness and calming skills. The activities are suitable for use with groups and individual children aged 5–12, and can be adapted for children with specific attention and concentration difficulties and for older children.

This is an ideal resource for teachers, counsellors, social workers, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, youth workers, parents, and carers.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.

Part 1. Theoretical and Practical Background.

1. Introduction: Meeting children with mindfulness.
2. Understanding attention and concentration.
3. Mindfulness Play.
4. Structuring the emotional environment for Mindfulness Play.
5. Mindfulness play and well-being.
6. Control, adaptability and effectiveness.

Bibliography. References.

Part 2. Games and Activities.

7. Choosing groups, leaders, pairs and order of play.
8. Warm-ups and ice-breakers.
9. Focussing attention.
10. Concentrating for longer periods.
11. Self-calming.
12. Celebrating.