Mindfulness Art Activity: I am Here

In my mindful mornings group, we do meditations, grounding exercises, art activities, yoga, and nature connection activities. I like to do a wide variety of activities so that all of my students can find something that feels right for them. Not every kid will love yoga or meditation, and that’s okay. I just want them to find a mindfulness activity that helps them connect to the moment through whatever practice feels most comfortable. For many of my students, art activities are that practice! We recently did a grounding exercise and art activity to connect to our emotions in the moment and the results were amazing! Keep reading to find the mindfulness group art activity we did and how you can do it too.

Mindfulness Group Art Activity: I am Here

Materials

• card stock or plain white paper
• pencils
• markers
• watercolors or colored pencils

Grounding Activity

To begin, I gave all of my students a piece of plain card stock paper. They placed one hand on the paper and pressed their hand into the surface. I prompted them to notice where on their hands they noticed pressure and how the paper felt under the hands. Then I had them slowly open and close their fingers to feel their fingers glide over the paper.

Next, I had my students trace their hands with a pencil. As they traced, I encouraged them to notice how the pencil felt along their fingers (many noticed that it tickled). After they traced, students continued to lightly press their hands into the paper.

I prompted them, “Notice how your hand feels connected to the surface. As you feel connected to the surface, feel your connection below your own surface. What emotion are you feeling right now in this moment? Where in your body do you feel that emotion? Can you connect this area to your hand?”

Art Activity

When students were clued in to their emotions, they began to draw inside their outlined hands on the paper. I didn’t give a lot of prompting with this, but I did tell students to design the inside of the hand to show their emotions. Some students drew symmetric mandala-style designs. Others drew a different design in each finger to represent different emotions they were feeling.

For my example, I traced both hands. I wrote feeling words in each finger to show the two sides of feelings I had about a particular event. On one hand, I described hopeful and excited feelings. On the other hand, I describe nervous feelings about the same event. I used colors to represent these two different experiences as well.

After everyone drew their designs, some painted their hands while others colored them with colored pencils. Students used colors that best represented the ways they were feeling. Afterward, we all shared our creations, and it was amazing to hear about the emotions students identified and hear about where in their bodies they most felt those emotions as we did the exercise.

This was a great way to help students connect with their emotions and practice sharing them with others!

Keep reading…

Want to find more mindfulness art activities? Click here to read more on the blog about activities my students have loved! Want ready to implement mindfulness activities for your students? You’ll love these: