10 Mindfulness Exercises to Do With Your Kids (Kidsstuffworld.com)

10 Mindfulness Exercises to Do With Your Kids (Kidsstuffworld.com)

Labour Day weekend is sometimes fraught with anxiety of what's to come. School is starting. The summer is over. Change is afoot. 

We love these 10 simple mindfulness exercises to do with your children.

Think, Feel, Act: Lessons from research about young children (Ontario Ministry of Education)

What Is Self-Regulation?
Just about everywhere you turn these days you come across someone talking about the importance of enhancing children’s ability to self-regulate. This is because of a growing number of studies showing that self-regulation lays a foundation for a child’s long-term physical, psychological, behavioral, and educational well-being (Shanker, 2012).

We highly recommend this important reading by Dr. Stuart Shanker
York University:  http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/childcare/selfRegulate.html

15 Questions To Ask Your Kids To Help Them Have Good Mindsets (Lifehack.org)

15 Questions To Ask Your Kids To Help Them Have Good Mindsets (Lifehack.org)

One of the ways to encourage children to develop a positive mindset and practice it is to talk to them honestly and ask them leading questions. It’s not about telling them what to do; it’s about explaining to them the value of living positively and making the best of what they already have.

Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ Helps Kids (and Adults) Discover the Mind's Rich, Emotional Tapestry (New York Times)

Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ Helps Kids (and Adults) Discover the Mind's Rich, Emotional Tapestry (New York Times)

Can movies think? This is a longstanding critical question, usually answered in the negative. Literature, the thinking goes, is uniquely able to show us the flow of thought and feeling from within, but the camera’s eye and the two-dimensional screen can’t take us past the external signs of consciousness. 

Healthy Habits of Mind (Neuroscientist Richard Davidson & Mindful Schools Program)

Healthy Habits of Mind (Neuroscientist Richard Davidson & Mindful Schools Program)

Great film that shows how kindergarteners in Oxford Elementary School in Berkeley, San Francisco are introduced to mindfulness in school. They practice mindful listening, mindful eating, mindful movement and yoga. Mindfulness is a way of being and one of the benefits is that it teaches how to pay attention.

What Does Mindfulness Meditation Do To Your Brain (Scientific American Magazine)

What Does Mindfulness Meditation Do To Your Brain (Scientific American Magazine)

If you’ve never heard of mindfulness meditation, congratulations, you’ve just done a few moments of it. More people than ever are doing some form of this stress-busting meditation, and researchers are discovering it has some quite extraordinary effects on the brains of those who do it regularly.

Mindfulness Exercises Improve Kid's Math Scores (Time Magazine)

Mindfulness Exercises Improve Kid's Math Scores (Time Magazine)

In adults, mindfulness has been shown to have all kinds of amazing effects throughout the body: it can combat stress, protect your heart, shorten migraines and possibly even extend life. But a new trial published in the journal Developmental Psychology suggests that the effects are also powerful in kids as young as 9—so much so that improving mindfulness showed to improve everything from social skills to math scores.