Mindful play is a great way for kids to develop their focusing skills while learning to regulate their emotions and respond to any situation calmly, with kindness and compassion. Here are fifty-five simple and accessible games that can bring mindfulness to your daily routine. These delightful games, developed and tested over many years of working with children and their caregivers, are designed for kids, but they can be just as fun and transformative for adults!

The cards are divided into 6 categories: Connecting, focusing, caring, reframing, seeing and quieting. Each card included life skills, duration, age appropriate, instructions and tips. Some cards include variations, modifications and guided visualizations.

Author Bio:

Susan Kaiser Greenland is an internationally recognized leader in teaching mindfulness and meditation to children, teens, and families. She played a foundational role in making mindfulness practices developmentally appropriate for young people and helped to pioneer activity-based mindfulness with her first book The Mindful Child. Her second book, Mindful Games, offers simple explanations of complex concepts, methods, and themes while expanding upon her work developing activity-based mindfulness games. Susan and her husband, the author Seth Greenland, founded The Inner Kids Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that taught secular mindfulness in schools and community-based programs in the greater Los Angeles area from 2001 through 2009. In 2006, Susan was recognized as a “Champion for our Children” by First 5 LA, the largest and most influential children’s advocacy group in Los Angeles. Susan was on the clinical team of the Pediatric Pain Clinic at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, co-investigator on several UCLA research studies on the impact of mindfulness in education, and a collaborator on an investigation of mindful eating for children and caregivers. Research on the Inner Kids elementary school program has been published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology

Review:

“A wonderful, fun, and engaging way to bring mindfulness into a child’s life.” —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

“Mindful Games helps bring this transformative practice into the routines of those who will carry it into the future: our children.” —Congressman Tim Ryan

“Mindful Games will undoubtedly be a wonderful resource for every parent and child alike.” —Andy Puddicombe, founder of Headspace

“Mindful Games is an invaluable resource for anyone with children in their lives—indeed, for anyone at all. Highly recommended.” —Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

Also available from this author

Mindful Games: Sharing Mindfulness and Meditation with Children, Teens, and Families