Ages 6-12 CARE’s Soothing Place

Welcome to the CARE’s Soothing Place for children ages 6-12. We hope you enjoy your time here as we provide you with resources to help with mindfulness, wellness, and coping skills for your child. Click any of the drop-down links below to learn more!

Mindfullness

“The simple practice of bringing a gentle, accepting attitude to the present moment” -David Gelles

“Paying full attention to something. It means slowing down to really notice what you’re doing. Being mindful is the opposite of rushing or multitasking. When you’re mindful, you’re taking your time. You’re focusing in a relaxed, easy way” – KidsHealth.org

Helpful Apps

Mindfulness Family App: 

  • Provides mindfulness meditations for kids, different sleep meditations, various sounds of nature. (APP only: free/Premium-$4.99/iTunes-$9.99).

Headspace for Kids:

  • Enjoy fun, engaging activities that teach kids the basics of mindfulness. They’ll practice breathing exercises, visualizations, and even try some focus-based meditation. Available on Apple and Google Play (free trial period, then 12.99 per month) also on a website https://www.headspace.com/meditation/kids

Sleep Meditation for Kids:

  • Children’s bedtime meditation.
  • Free on Apple.

Apps for Anxiety and Stress:

  • Breathe, Think, Do Sesame (Apple and Android)
    • Free app.
    • This is a resource app for you to share with your child to help teach skills such as problem-solving, self-control, planning, and task persistence.
  • Calm (Apple and Android)
    • Free trial and then $70 for the year.
    • Calm is the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. This app can help with experiencing better sleep, lower stress, and less anxiety with guided meditations, sleep stories, breathing programs, stretching exercises, and relaxing music.
  • DreamyKid (Apple)
    • Free app.
    • In just minutes every day, help your kids live healthier and happier lives with DreamyKid Meditation for Kids.
  • Headspace: Guided Meditation and Mindfulness (Apple and Android)
    • Free trial and then $12.99/month.
    • Get happy. Stressless. Sleep soundly. Headspace is your guide to mindfulness for your everyday life. Learn meditation and mindfulness skills from world-class experts like Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe, and choose from hundreds of guided meditations on everything from managing stress and anxiety to sleep, focus, and mind-body health.
  • Kids Yoga Deck (Apple)
    • Cost is $1.99
    • Children will love to move their bodies as they flip through their very own yoga deck. With clear pictures and step-by-step instructions, these yoga poses are fun, child-friendly, and great for everybody!
  • Stop, Breathe, and Think Kids (Apple and Android)
    • $10/month or $60 for the year.
    • MyLife (formerly known as Stop, Breathe & Think) is an award-winning meditation and mindfulness app that helps you find your quiet place. It allows you to check-in with how you’re feeling and recommends short guided meditations and mindfulness activities, tuned to your emotions.
  • Breathing Bubbles (Apple)
    • $0.99 for the download
    • Have problems relaxing or meditating? Not able to focus on your work? Try Bubble, your personal breathing companion.
      Take a break and breathe with the audio and visual breathing coach. Inhale and Exhale using audio commands, and choose your breathing preferences the way you like.
  • Smiling Mind (Apple and Android)
    • The app is free.
    • Their programs are designed to assist people in dealing with the pressure, stress, and challenges of daily life.
  • Positive Penguins (Apple)
    • The app is $0.99.
    • Positive Penguins app is a resilience-building app for all children. The app has a simple 5-minute guided meditation for children to learn to sit, relax, and let go of the thoughts as they come into their heads.
  • Calm Counter (Apple)
    • $2.99
    • Calm Counter is a visual and audio tool to help people calm down when they are angry or anxious. The app includes a social story about anger and audio/visual tools for calming down.
  • Emotionary (Apple and Android)
    • Free
    • This truly unique dictionary is a world first. Emotionary guides users through five primary emotions to find the right category of feeling, with all definitions pared back to the essentials and displayed so they can be easily compared. It’s the ideal way to develop a rich vocabulary of emotions – the essential building block for emotional intelligence.
  • Chill Outz (Apple)
    • $4.99
    • Time to move to Chill Outz®! Developed by pioneering child psychologist Jacqueline Vorpahl (a.k.a. Dr V.). Chill Outz® is a collection of fun animated stories teaching children proven techniques to stay mindful & relaxed anywhere, anytime.
  • Super Stretch Yoga
    • Free
    • Move, play, and breathe as Super Stretch introduces you to his friends and their yoga poses. Super Stretch is your guide who takes you on your journey.
  • Relax Melodies (Apple and Android)
    • Free
    • Having trouble unwinding & falling asleep? This app will help you to sleep to your own beat with Relax Melodies.
  • Gro Garden (Apple and Android)
    • The app is $2.99.

Peace Out Guided Relaxation for Kids

Progressive Muscle Relaxation for Kids

Guided Imagery

Guided Imagery

Activities and Games

Activities and games help kids practice mindfulness. All of the activities and games down below encourage and teach children how to practice mindfulness in a fun and engaging way.

Games:

  1. Blindfolded Taste Tests: Do this with a variety of foods: vegetables, fruit, and dried fruit. Investigate one food item, such as a raisin, or a cranberry, using all the senses, (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste), as if you have never experienced it before. Kids learn focus skills, patience, and paying attention to details.
  2. Playing with Balloons: This looks like a slow-motion movie to watch. Play with just one balloon per child and pop them gently into the air with your hands, trying to keep them afloat. This is a good way of slowing down more active kids who still might need a little more movement to keep them engaged in mindful games.
  3. What’s in the Bag?: This is a great way to get your imagination going. Gather objects of different sizes and textures, put them in a bag, and have your friends and family try to guess what’s in the bag! Kids learn focus, patience, and creativity.
  4. Jenga: Have your parents buy the Jenga board game and try to remove one block at a time without making the tower fall. Kids will learn the motor, social, emotional regulation, and focus skills.

Toys:

  1. Kites – help with relaxation, focus, clearing of the mind.
  2. Stuffed Animals – help build security, keeps them grounded, helps them focus in the present time.
  3. Cards – help with relaxation, fidget option, focus centered.
  4. Puzzles – build patience, keep grounded, focused in the present time.

Activities:

  1. Explore gratitude by going back and forth with your family or friends (for as long as you can!) to name as many things possible that you are grateful for.
  2. Listen to some music and see how many different instruments you can each hear.
  3. Practice kind thoughts by prompting your child to think of 5 people they’d like to send kind wishes to.

Music

Music can have a profound effect on both the emotions and the body. Faster music can make you feel more alert and concentrate better. A slower tempo can quiet your mind and relax your muscles, making you feel soothed while releasing the stress of the day.

Classical Disney

Classical Music for Kids

Relaxing Positivity Music

Scents

Scents are a good alternative for changing someone’s mood. Certain scents can get someone to get energized, relax, and help with anxiety.

  • Scents for energy; orange, peppermint, lemon, Eucalyptus and Rosemary.

  • Scents for relaxation; Lavender, vanilla, chamomile, and Rosemary

  • Scents for anxiety; Lavender, Rose Essential Oil, Ylang Ylang Essential Oil, Bergamot, German Chamomile, Jasmine, Clary Sage.

Wellness

Gardening

Caring for your garden can be a great form of mindfulness meditation. By connecting with the earth and with the practice of gardening, you can cultivate a healthy mind and feel calm and connected.

  • Practice gratefulness. ​

  • Be present by studying a flower, its color, and texture.​

  • Blow on leaves.

  • Listen to the sounds of nature in the garden, such as the wind blowing on the leaves to the birds chirping.  ​

  • Mindful eating. Growing your own food gives you the satisfaction of eating something that you took care of and grew. ​

  • Plant the seeds. With gentle guidance on how far apart to place the seeds, allow your little ones to get a little dirty and plant the seeds into the soil.​

  • Watering. Teach your child the importance of watering the plants with care.​

  • Weeding. Keep their hands occupied.​

  • Harvesting. You can make this a fun game on who can pick the most fruits and vegetables.​

  • Reading about the garden. Children’s books such as Who’s in the Garden and Hello, Garden Bugs. ​

Local Gardens to Visit:

Nutrition

Practicing healthy eating habits from a young age creates overall wellness for a growing child. Having the proper nutrients for growth and brain development is an important part of wellness.

  • Week 1: Add more veggies and fruit, go for all types to get the most nutrients. Dark greens (broccoli, spinach), red and orange (sweet potatoes, carrots)
  • Week 2: Bring on the Whole Grains! (Brown rice, rolled oats, whole wheat pasta)
  • Week 3: Cut back on salt (sodium) and sugar, look for labels like no sodium or not salted when shopping
  • Week 4: Bring it all together for a successful healthy eating pattern! No food is forbidden- the key is to add more of the foods that are nourishing for your body and less of the foods that aren’t.

Nutrition Tips:

A great way to get youth to drink more water is by adding flavor drops to mimic fruit juices.

  • Sweetleaf: water flavor enhancers
  • Mio: flavored water enhancer
  • Monk Drops – 100% Monkfruit Liquid Sweetener

Study reveals a link between certain diets and their impact on mental health. Poor diets, researchers say, play a role in worsening mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. However, diets rich in vegetables and olive oil, such as the Mediterranean diet, can improve symptoms of depression and anxiety.

https://neurosciencenews.com/diet-mental-health-15384/

Foods that can help with moods and health: 

  • Leafy greens.
  • Walnuts.
  • Wholegrains.
  • Yogurt.
  • Berries (Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries)
  • Fish (fish oil, omega 3’s)

Exercise

When children exercise, they help fight diseases, they can improve their behavior, develop healthy habits, and helps them reach better sleep. All these encompass overall wellness.

Coping Skills

Breathing Techniques

Learning different breathing techniques at a young age will help equip your child with coping skills in times of need. Try some of these breathing techniques with your child!

Relaxing:

Other cool breathing techniques:

  • Mindful breathing-children – Mindfulness can boost the quality of our lives in numerous ways.

  • Noticing the breath – this involves simply paying attention to what breathing actually feels like.

  • Five-finger starfish meditation – this breathing technique has kids holding up one hand in a starfish position (fingers spread wide) while they gently trace up and down each finger with the other hand, focusing on regular breathing at the same time.

  • Counting the breath – this technique is what it sounds like: have your children pause and count their breaths. One breath in is “1”, the next breath out is “2,” etc. You can have them count to 10 if they’re very young, or slightly higher depending on their abilities.

  • Square Breath – Breath in, to the count of four. Hold the breath for four seconds. Breathe out to the count of four. Wait for four seconds before taking in your next breath.

  • Darth Vader Breath – Breath in deeply through your nose. Keep your mouth closed and exhale from the back of your throat, making a “Darth Vader”-style noise as you do. Show your child how to do it, then practice it with them.

  • Bunny Breath – This can bring energy and focus to people who do this breathing technique

Journaling

These can be used for all ages but can be drawn for younger ages.

  • What makes you happy?
  • What makes you sad?
  • What is something good that happened today?
  • What is something that you feel could have gone differently today?
  • What do you hope for in the future?
  • What do you get excited to do?
  • What do you do when you are upset?

Movement

Movement can help calm strong feelings whether it is anger, anxiety, or whatever it may be. All these forms of movement can help the youth of all ages cope with their feelings and problems.

  • Go Noodle: GoNoodle engages kids every month with movement and mindfulness videos created by child development experts. Available for free at school, home, and everywhere kids are!
  • Yoga: Yoga is a way to exercise our bodies, our breath, and our minds all at the same time. There are many different types of yoga and it’s important to find one that you enjoy and fits your lifestyle.
  • Stretching: Stretching, as it relates to physical health and fitness, is the process of placing particular parts of the body into a position that will lengthen, or elongate, the muscles and associated soft tissues.
  • Mindful posing: This exercise is a great way to help your child strengthen her mind-body connection.
  • Walking: walking is fun and interesting – you get to notice things along the way and meet people in your neighborhood; It’s sociable – children love walking with their friends, especially on the journey to school; It makes them feel good – the exercise makes them feel calmer and happier and it improves their concentration, making it easier to focus in school; It promotes independence and freedom – children can make more decisions about their journey than they can in the car. They can choose to stop and look at something along the way and they can start to make decisions about road safety. For older children, walking independently offers some time to themselves.
  • Exercise: This can be fun for kids, it strengthens the heart, It helps keep arteries and veins clear, It strengthens the lungs, It controls weight and so much more.
  • Going to a park: This offers youth the opportunity to get out of the house and explore a new place, they could meet new friends and experience new sensations of being outdoors. It helps kids curiosity and keeps them active.

Color

Colors have been shown to bring positive moods to many people. Some colors that have this effect are blue, violet, pink, green, gray, tan, white, and yellow. Below are some activities that they can do and use some of these colors to help them feel calm and de-escalate from a stressful situation.

Hobbies

Having a hobby is a great coping skill to unwind from your daily routine – whether it’s learning a new skill, doing something outdoors, reading, or doing something musical or artistic. Spending time on an activity that you enjoy can improve your mental health and wellbeing.

  • Instrument – Playing music helps with creativity, analytical skills, language, math, fine motor skills, and more.

  • Sports – Playing sports create discipline, responsibility, and increases self esteem.

  • Playing a board or card game – This helps cognitive development, builds family dynamics, and helps build patience.

  • Art – Art is a way to cope with stress and articulate difficult emotions through art. Helps kids build creativity and expand their imagination.

Rest

A good night’s rest contributes to a child’s physical and mental growth, aids in learning and retention, and keeps them active and cheerful.

  • Sleep schedule – Sticking to a set bedtime helps children feel secure because it offers predictability. Kids of all ages (and grown-ups, too) should ideally go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, give or take 30 to 60 minutes.

  • Doing nothing – “Doing Nothing” is actually doing something, it is the practice of ‘Mindfulness” and giving ourselves permission to do nothing.

  • Clearing head – When your child is in need of tension relief, try one of the techniques attached in the link.

Reading

*All Maricopa County libraries do curb side pick up

Feeling Anxious?

Anxiety means feeling worried, nervous or fearful. We all experience anxiety at times and some anxiety can be helpful. For example, feeling some anxiety before a test, or public-speaking can help motivate you to prepare for it.

Below are some books stories and activities that can help you when you feel a little anxious!

Activities

Here are some additional activities to try from what you learned throughout this room.

Make a Worry Box

Calm Down Jar

Paint the Galaxy

Paint a Rainbow Tree

Draw a Stormtrooper

Squishy Bag

Origami Boat