You guys you guys, I discovered the best thing!! I’ve been trying to figure out practical, not-overwhelming-or-hard-or-time-consuming ways to bring mindfulness into my classroom, and when I came across this artist, I realized it was made just for me. Or so I’d like to believe. Anyway, her name is Kira Willey, and she is a singer/songwriter and yoga person who wanted to bring more mindfulness into kids’ lives. She has lots of albums filled with beautiful yoga-for-kids songs, but my absolute favorite is her new one, Mindful Moments for Kids. I highly recommend you get it.
The songs are about a minute long, and have names like “Candle Breath,” “Imagine You’re a Tree,” and “Be a Bumblebee.” They give short and simple directions for calming your body, breathing in and out deeply (sometimes like a bumblebee, sometimes like you’re blowing out a candle), and centering your mind. The fun instructions (“pretend you’re holding a cup of hot cocoa…take a small sip and say mmmmm as you breathe out”) completely captivate my kids, and the songs get even the squirreliest bunch of kindergarteners to calm down and focus. The album has 32 different songs on it, so the kids always have a lot to choose from.
I especially like doing them when the class comes to the rug. If you think about it, transition times like coming to the rug are a really good time to take a minute for mindfulness. I realized recently that I don’t allow my kids to have slow transitions from one thing to the next. When writing time is wrapping up, I say “okay time to come to the rug for science” and expect them to be cleaned up, seated and quiet within minutes. We rush our kids from subject to subject, from room to room, from area to area. But sometimes they need time to refocus on the new topic at hand, or the new role they are expected to play (before I was a writer, now I am a scientist). These mindful moments from Kira Willey are a perfect way to help them do just that.