Junior Primary Resources
Your Mind is like a Garden - By Shona Innes
Age level: Junior Primary
Type: Picture Book
Topic: Mindfulness
Useful for: Understanding what Mindfulness is
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This book is fantastic to illustrate to students what Mindfulness is and how it might look and feel. It has beautifully illustrated pictures that teaches children about social and emotional growth and explores emotional balance. Shona Innes brings her background of clinical and forensic psychology to her books through the way she addresses the concept of mental health. Your Mind is Like a Garden allows students to begin exploring Mindfulness through storytelling.
Age level: Junior Primary
Type: Picture Book
Topic: Yoga
Useful for: Illustrating basic yoga poses
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This gorgeously illustrated book follows a little frog who describes each of the yoga poses to the reader. It is a great resource to have in the classroom for students to try yoga independently. It can be useful for short breaks in their learning or group exercises before commencing their work.
Age level: All
Type: App
Topic: Meditation
Useful for: Meditation Program
Time: 1 minute to 45 minutes
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Smiling mind have created mindfulness programs for a range of ages and purposes. There are different age brackets and categories to choose from so that the meditations are easy to follow and allow you to progress the more that you practise. Whether practising personally, in the workplace or at school, it is a simple way to follow guided meditations to bring a sense of calm and peace into your life and your student's lives.
To be able to access the programs, you must create an account with Smiling Mind, but once you have done this, you are free to progress through at your own pace.
Age level: All
Type: Website / App
Topic: Meditation
Useful for: All Meditation
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This app is useful for personal guidance with meditation and provides multiple meditation programs for different purposes. Some features are available for free, however to unlock the whole Headspace library, you must pay for a subscription to their app, which has a monthly fee between $12.50 and $19.99 (AUD). They offer programs for all aspects of life, including daily practise, personal growth and sleep.
Age level: All
Type: Application
Topic: Meditation
Useful for: All Meditation
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Insight timer is an app that allows you to be entirely in control of your meditation practice. This app has multiple functions and ways to meditate. As well as having guided meditations, this app allows you to set timers for meditation along with background music to create a peaceful atmosphere. You can also connect to the community of people who are meditating along with you. There are courses on the app that have a fee for access. However, many other features will keep you meditating and are available for free.
Breathing Superpower Compilation: Kids Mindfulness by Stop, Breathe and Think
Age level: Year 2-5
Type: Video
Topic: Breathing Techniques
Useful for: Self-regulation
Time: 12.12
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This compilation of breathing techniques is a clear way to illustrate how to carry out breathing techniques for younger students. The cartoons help to keep students engaged in the activities and provide them with visual representations of the feeling of their breath.
Three main breathing techniques included are:
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Breathing Anchor – This runs from 0.00 to 5.18
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Square Breathing – 5.18 – 7.38
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Counting breaths – 7.38-9.52
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Cooling out-breath – 9.52 – 12.12
It can be used in the classroom to teach students different strategies to self-regulate as paying attention to our breathing can often be a way to bring a great sense of calm into our bodies.
Sleeping Dragon Guided Meditation for Kids by Cosmic Kids Yoga
Age level: Junior Primary
Type: Video
Topic: Meditation
Useful for: Guided Meditation
Time: 10.16
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This Meditation gives students a focus for their practice and uses stories to illustrate everyday situations that are faced by students and the ways that Mindfulness and Meditation can help. Jamie discusses the difficulty of Meditation and clearly explains this to young children while also providing them with easy ways to begin to practice. She gives students different strategies to use when meditating, this Meditation, in particular, focuses on self-regulation through breathing. It could be beneficial to use this Meditation for children who struggle to drift off to sleep.
At the end of the video, Jamie gives students some tips to integrate mindfulness into their day in a positive way.
Mindful Minute: Quick Mindfulness Meditation Exercise for Kids by Go Zen!
Age level: All
Type: Video
Topic: Mindfulness
Useful for: Mindfulness Break
Time: 1.17 minutes
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The video starts with writing on the screen so, for JP students, a teacher may need to assist with reading it off the screen for them as it gives some simple instructions quickly.
This exercise is a quick and easy one that can be implemented in any classroom and eventually students can carry out this activity without the video. It is a simple, one-minute exercise that allows students to slow down and listen to the sound while slowing their breathing for one minute.
Mindfulness for Kids - Learning About Our Thoughts by Fablefy: The Whole Child
Age level: Junior Primary
Type: Video
Topic: Mindfulness
Good for: Understanding Mindfulness
Time: 4:14 minutes
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This video illustrates what mindfulness is visually for young children. It connects thoughts and emotions and begins to teach about beliefs on our thoughts and the choice to focus on the ones that we want to and not listen to the ones that we want to eliminate. The video encourages deep breathing to help children to understand how to settle their thoughts.