Mindfulness Art Activity: Black Glue Mandalas

I recently started a mindfulness class at my school. I have 13 students who start their day with me for 40 minutes, and we do mindfulness activities each day. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, and students are reporting feeling more calm and focused throughout the day. We do yoga, guided meditation, and sensory explorations on most day, but I wanted to throw a mindfulness art activity into the mix! My students loved this black glue mandala activity and keep asking to do it again. It was really easy and inexpensive to get started. Keep reading to get the details on how you can do this mindfulness art activity with your school counseling students!

Mindfulness Art Activity: Black Glue Mandalas

Supply List:

• White, card stock paper
• Watercolor paints & brushes
• White glue
• Black paint
• Cups & water

Get all of the supplies on Amazon here:

Instructions:

1. Start by drawing a mandala on the white card stock paper with a pencil. I have done some pre-teaching with these students about what mandalas are and what they represent. They each draw their own designs free-hand or by tracing circular items that I provide (mostly cups of different sizes). Most of my students drew a mandala, but some wanted to draw other shapes – totally fine! It’s important that the activity is personally meaningful.
2. While students are drawing their mandalas, I mixed black paint into the white glue. Ideally, you’ll have used some of the glue so there’s room to add paint, but it doesn’t take much paint to change the color of the glue. I used a long metal straw to stir the paint into the glue.
3. Trace the mandala design with the black glue. Students should do this lightly and try not to leave globs of paint on the paper as it will take longer to dry and might run on the page.
4. Let the mandalas dry for several hours. We let our designs dry overnight until our next meeting.
5. Use watercolors to paint inside the design. You can provide color directives for students to use certain colors to express certain feelings or experiences or let students paint the design as they like. While students paint, I play meditation music in the room and encourage them to notice how they feel while they do the painting activity.
6. Let the paint dry and enjoy! I’d like to do this again on 5×7 card stock and give students frames to display their work.

Want more mindfulness activities?

Want to do more mindfulness activities with your students? Find more ideas and activities on my blog with this link! Have a favorite mindfulness art activity or school counseling art activity? Leave a link in the comments so we can check it out!