Mindful Kids

add to outlook add to google calendar remind me

Wednesday, May 17th, 2017
3:45 PM to 5:00 PM

Mindful Kids is an in-depth introduction to mindfulness for 7 to 11-year-olds it's designed to introduce core foundations of mindfulness in fun, engaging and practical ways. Mindfulness essentially is the practice of training the brain to be present. It is a secular practice, which involves paying attention to what is happening as it happens, and doing so with an attitude of kindness, acceptance, and non-judgment.

Each of the 5 lessons are 75min long introducing and exploring 8 tenets of mindfulness. Focusing first on intention, attention, and attitude. Then as the course progresses, children then learn to cultivate gratitude, handle difficult thoughts and emotions, and finally develop kindness towards themselves and others. To see the current schedule visit www.donnarichmond.ca - Classes and workshops page. Structure Of The Program Mindful Kids can be broken down into 8 tenets: intention, attention, attitude, gratitude, resilience, kindness to self, kindness to others, and practice.

INTENTION Mindfulness begins with the inner decision to be aware of thoughts and feelings without judgment. The children learn how the brain works and why paying attention to the present moment can be of benefit to them.

ATTENTION The ability to keep ones attention in the present moment is fundamental to mindfulness. To gain a better understand of attention we explore how our can tend to wander and how that might affect our experiences. The children begin training their attention to be present.

ATTITUDE Is an expression of favour or disfavour towards a person, place, fact or emotion and directly affects our experiences. Learning the value of non-reactivity, we introduce curiosity and the concept of the beginner’s mind.

GRATITUDE Is the practice of recognizing and appreciating the opportunities of happiness and wellbeing that are available to us in the present moment.

RESILIENCE Is the art of handling difficult emotions, thoughts and mind-states with wisdom, courage and awareness. We also begin to explore the concept that thoughts are not facts and that our thoughts are affected by our feelings.

KINDNESS TO SELF The children are cultivating an attitude of acceptance and kindness towards themselves. We explore what is meant by acceptance and kindness and how we can be kind to ourselves in practical ways.

KINDNESS TO OTHERS Building on the understanding that everybody wants to be happy the children begin to explore empathy and how it leads to compassion. We begin to explore this concept through acts of kindness to others.

PRACTICE Reflecting on the previous lessons the children have the opportunity to creatively express all they have learned and develop a plan to put that learning into use in a way they can personally own and be proud of.