Kids love art and creating with their hands. I am always looking for mindfulness art activities that I can do with children to help them calm down. Relaxation, mental health strategies are important for children to learn.

They need to be taught to be aware of their bodies and when they are feeling stressed, nervous or anxious.

This mindful art activity allows you to create a quiet, simple tool to use to calm down. For more mindfulness activities, a link to a FREE mindful choice board is included at the bottom.

I did this activity with over 100 young children at school and again at home with my own children. It is a great mindfulness art activity and the keepsake is perfect for mindfulness and relaxation.

Mindfulness Art Activity – Materials

A great thing about this mindfulness art activity is that all you need is polymer clay! An assortment of colours is ideal, but you can absolutely create a solid coloured mindfulness stone.

I bought a package with a variety of colours for children to choose from.

How to Create Your Mindfulness Art Stone

To start, I cut up each bar of polymer clay into small pieces – roughly the size of a grape. Children then chose 3 pieces that they want to make their mindful art out of. But the more colours the better!

If you have more colours and want to offer more colour choices, that’s great. The size of the three balls of clay together does seem to work well for young children and the size of their hands.

For any adults doing these mindfulness art activities, you could use even more pieces of clay.

I let each child choose their colours because it is a great sensory activity, but also because they are more likely to use it if they personally created it.

Mixing Your Mindful Art

Once the colors have been chosen, roll them together to make a ball. The more you roll and play with the clay the better it mixes.

To extend the activity for young children, you can have them roll one colour of clay at a time. Once all of the colours have been rolled, then you can roll them together to form one larger ball.

Encourage them to be mindful and consider what the clay feels like, smells like and looks like. Can they think of words to describe the clay?

Encourage them to roll it across a table while taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out as they roll it back towards them.

One thing to avoid is mixing the clay too much. Once the colours have been mixed together to form a call, keep rolling so that the sides are smooth.

It is important to then stop rolling. If you continue it will mix too much and you will lose your variety of colours and the colours will mix together.

The swirls of colour create a nice effect and creates the individuality of each mindfulness stone.

Roll and mix enough so that the colors are all together to form one ball, but make sure you can still see each color.

Forming Your Calming Stone

Once the colours have been swirled together, roll into into a ball. Next, pinch the ball with your thumb and index finger. Once it is squished and leaves a print of your thumb and finger, it is ready to be baked.

Follow the instruction on your polymer clay for cooking time, but typically it takes about 15 minutes in the oven, on a low temperature, to harden. Once cooled, you have completed your mindful stone!

Make sure to have an adult bake the mindfulness stones/polymer clay.

I like mindfulness art activities because once the art is done, you have created something with a purpose. The mindful stones are great to have in class with children.

Children will love the feel and look of the stone they created. When I did this with my classes at school there were not two mindful stone that ended up looking exactly the same.

The swirls and mixes all made each one look different and unique to each child. This is a bonus when the stones were being used in the classroom because they were much easier to tell them apart.

If you are looking for more mindful and kindness activities for children, at home, or school, check out this “I am Kind at School” printable booklet – for free!

Mindfulness Art Extension Ideas

The stones can be used to help children, or even adults, to calm down. Hold it in your hand and rub your thumb over where your thumb print was left. It is a relaxing, quiet sensory activity kids enjoy using.

The place where your thumb print is is smooth and a very interesting, calming feeling to rub.

You can use the stones at home or in class by having each child hold and rub their stone at times that things or activities are getting too loud or energetic. Children can find a quiet spot to sit and refocus while rubbing their stone.

Another interesting thing to try is to have children switch stones with a friend. Have them feel it and rub it and see if they can notice a difference.

Does it feel the same? Does your thumb print fit their thumb print the same? Your stone is unique to you!

After creating them with young children, I even created one for myself. I love the fact 30 kids can use them at the same time without any sound. It gives everyone the chance to calm down.

There are lots of mindful activities that you can do with kids beyond mindfulness stones. For a FREE printable choice board with 10 activities to get you started, click the image/link below to subscribe and download.

Mindfulness Activities for Kids

Add mindfulness to your classroom or home with more mindfulness activities. Incorporating these activities into children’s daily lives can help to create calm.

 

More Hands-On Teaching Ideas and Activities

If you are looking for more activities to do with children and more mindful art activities and centers like social emotional activities, below is a collection of my favourite and most popular activities that I have done at home and in my classroom.