Mindfulness Apps for Kids

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Mindful Apps for Kids

 

There are a huge variety of mindfulness meditation apps to choose from – whether your kids are trying to read/study/calmdown/fall asleep/stay asleep.  Many apps have an online and a physical component.  Studies have shown that mindfulness techniques can help kids fall asleep faster, sleep longer and reduce their night wakings.

I try to keep my kids electronic time to a minimum as much as possible but I am human, I am a busy exhausted mom that needs a break from time to time too.  I am a big fan of Moshi because they are audio meditations and I can set them to play as we are winding down to sleep. They have been awesome at getting our kids to turn their brains off at night. Having two children with ADHD/ADD and anxiety seems to make everything just that much harder and gettting them to sleep is no exception.

Here are five kids mindfulness apps I have found (in no particular order):

  1. Moshi

    Moshi is an award-winning, audio-only app that helps kids get to sleep faster and stay asleep for longer.  There are music, sounds and stories. There are even some special guest narrators, including Goldie Hawn, Patrick Stewart and Brian Blessed.  The nice thing about Moshi is that it works with Chromecast and allows you to cast your favourite Moshi songs and stories to your Chromecast enabled TV, Google home devices or speakers.

    The app is free to download and a subset of the content is free to use. To use the full catalogue of content, Moshi offers a 7-day free trial, after that it is $50 usd per year. * note: Moshi is free for teacher/educators.

  2.  Headspace for Kids

    Parents and kids can enjoy fun, engaging activities that teach them the basics of mindfulness. They’ll practice breathing exercises, visualizations and even try some focus-based meditation. There are customized sessions for three age groups: 5 and under, 6-8 and 9-12.

    The first 7-14 days are offered as a free trial then its  $5.83-$12.99 usd per month

  3.  Smiling Mind

    Smiling Mind offers a FREE mindfulness app.  Their app is a unique tool developed by psychologists and educators to help bring balance to your life. The app also works with Google home. Just say: “Hey Google, talk to Smiling Mind” or “Hey Google, do a sleep meditation with Smiling Mind” or “Hey Google, use Smiling Mind to do a relax meditation” or “Hey Google, help me focus with Smiling Mind”.

  4.  Breathe, Think, Do With Sesame Street

Designed for kids 0-6 years old, Breathe, Think , Do with Sesame Street is a FREE app to encourge young children to do just that, when they are needing to calm down.

Breathe

First, help kids calm down.

    • Encourage them to put their hands on their bellies and slowly take three deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
    • Ask them to whisper “calm down” (or another encouraging phrase) to themselves.

Think

Next, help children understand their problem and think about a plan to solve it.

    • Encourage little ones to tell you how they are feeling and why. You can help them find the words by telling them what you notice (“It seems like you feel frustrated because you’re having trouble putting on your sweater.”).
    • Help come up with a few different plans for solving the problem (such as unbuttoning the top button).

Do

Encourage kids to choose a plan and try it out.

    • Ask, “Which plan is best? Let’s try it!”
    • If the plan doesn’t work, ask, “How else could you do this?,” and then try the next plan.
    • Remind kids that learning new things takes practice. It’s not that they can’t do it; it’s that they can’t do it yet.

(Source: https://sesamestreetincommunities.org/activities/breathe-think-do/)

5.   Mylife Meditation (formally known as Stop, Breathe, Think)

My Life Mediation is a FREE app with its own youtube channel with free meditations etc.  They offer mental health tracking,  mindful meditations, anxiety relief, sleep meditations and breathing excercises.  They teach you to mediate and allow your body to get realigned all for just a few minutes a day. You can upgrade to a premium membership to access 400+ more activities for $9.99/month $58.99/year USD.

Looking for mindful apps for adults?  Check out Modern Mama’s blog post on 5 meditation apps.

For a list of other mindful activities and resources be sure to check out our blog post on Mindfulness For Busy Families. 

Enjoy !

Tina Evans

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