Rainbow Spin Painting

(Art)

Have you ever walked somewhere and not remembered the path you took?

If you have experienced this, then you already know what it means NOT to be mindful; to miss moments of our lives that we can never get back.

Mindfulness is an art of paying attention by slowing down and learning to bring stillness to our busy minds. Being mindful means paying attention to what is happening in the here and now. We can choose where to direct our focus.

Sometimes life can make us feel overwhelmed, mindfulness can help to observe, concentrate, and relaxbetter. It can help us feeling more soothe, safe, connected and kind.

Materials:

-7 homemade rainbow color paints, we used leftover paints

-a card stock

-salad spinner

Instruction:

-present the materials in front of your kiddo

-let your kiddo explore freely

Children with their growing mind and body are like big emotions in small body. Mindful games in daily life help to slow down things, to introduce mindfulness from early age.

One of the mindful game we love to do together is using the spinning salad. Our kiddo is still too young to learn how to blow bubbles or pinwheel effectively, but pushing a lever pump is one of her favorite. Add paints and thick paper inside to excite her more for the process art, this is a lovely way to slow things down. I encourage her to breathe in deep and out slowly while pushing the lever pump and watch as she become engrossed in the slowing, gentle movement of the salad she pushed. If she pushed too hard, over and over too fast, the salad spinner would re-start and not spinning until she let it go. She used to be impatient, not only pushing it too hard, too fast but also opening the lid before it went spinning. There was surely nothing yet on her process art.

By being mindful, to be still, a beautiful spinning art would be there to collect.

This is a good way of slowing down more active kids who still might need a little more movement to keep them engaged in mindful games. Their whole body and mind is engaged on a single focus.

If we can bring a gentle, light-hearted approach to mindful games our kids are more likely to do them again and again. And we will be able to develop their mindfulness habit!