Make mindfulness practice fun with this playful mindfulness game! This activity uses music to help kids learn core mindfulness skills. Music is known to be able to change your mood. Music can cheer you up, comfort you or even give you the blues.

The “Happy And Sad Music” mindfulness game helps kids:

improve focusing skills,

pay attention to sounds,

and to get in touch with emotions.

Win, win & win!! :-)

Preparing the activity is lots of fun too. All you need to do is to make a playlist with music that expresses different emotions. With older kids you can explore different kinds of emotions, and with younger kids you may want to keep it simple.

Oh and … I made a playlist for you to get started with :-)

Mindfulness Game for Kids: Happy And Sad Music

Purpose: Mindfulness of sounds, Understanding emotions, Focus

Best for: Ages 4+, groups or one-on-one

What you need: A selection of music

Choose songs that elicit different kinds of emotions.

Play the songs one by one, and ask the kids if they think the song is happy or sad.

Then ask them why they think that. What is it that makes the song happy or sad? Is it the pitch, the volume, the speed or the singers voice, or what the singer tells? Continue like this until you’ve tried all songs.

Here’s my “Happy and Sad Songs” playlist … you can use it to build your own list of songs.

I hope you’ll enjoy this activity with the kids!! We sure do :-)

You’ll find 150 playful mindfulness activities in my 5-star rated best selling book:

“The Most Important Mindfulness Book You’ll Ever Buy” – Helen Hudson

Ultimate Mindfulness Activity Book – 150 Playful Mindfulness Activities for Kids and Teens (and Grown-Ups too!)

I wish you many many mindful moments :-)

Chris Bergstrom

Chief Mindfulness Ninja @ Blissful Kids

 #1 Best-Selling Author of:
 
★★★★★ Awesome “Bought this book for my 6 year old, but even my 3 and 15 yo love the activities. We usually incorporate activities on a daily basis and it’s been working so far.”
&
★★★★★ Cute and calming “With the craze being all about baby sharks, it’s a great idea to take it and use it to help our kids calm down themselves. I’m a therapist and look forward to using this with my kid clients.”

See also:

Liking the Music

Stay Cool Game

5 Mindful Games

If you are new to mindfulness with children OR you want to make practice easy we recommend our online mindfulness courses.


Chris Bergstrom is a bestselling mindfulness author, the founder of BlissfulKids.com, a blog dedicated to children’s mindfulness, and a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is a certified mindfulness facilitator and trained to teach mindfulness to students in K-12. He’s also known as “the dad who tried 200+ mindfulness activities” and has taught meditation for more than 15 years.