I’ve tried more than 200 mindfulness activities for kids, so I felt lucky to discover a new fun mindfulness game.
We decided to start family Aikido together with my son Anton. Now, I get to run, jump, climb and crawl for an hour every week – the same way kids do. It’s so much fun!
And what’s even better is that the instructors teach mindfulness skills to kids. I was so happy to discover that our dojo is big on mindfulness.
The last time we trained we learned a new fun mindfulness activity. We call it the Feather Ninja Game with my son. Anton is into ninjas since we know a few and we’ve trained the martial art together with my wife. So, Anton was super excited to start Aikido.
And guess what … if you can re-frame a mindfulness activity to be “ninja training” you have a winner. So, if you need to sell your kids on mindfulness or to get them excited about mindfulness then perhaps you can tell them that this game was taught by a black belt ;-)
Okay, the idea with “Feather Ninja” is to learn focusing skills and mindfulness of body. It’s simple and lots of fun to do—and you can easily modify it to your liking. You can do this activity one-on-one or with a group of kids.
Mindfulness Games for Kids – Feather Ninja Game
Purpose: Fun, body awareness, attention skills
Best for: Ages 4+, groups or one-on-one
What you need: Some space and feathers ( the kind you get from a craft shop, the small colorful ones )
CC Photo by Susanne Nilsson
To start you pair up and get a feather per pair. Then you decide who’s the ninja first.
Round #1
The other player takes the feather and drops it from as high up as they can. The ninja tries to catch the feather on his or her palm. You are not allowed to grab the feather, you simply try to catch it by allowing the feather to land on you. That’s the trick, you need some finesse to do that. So, that’s round one. You can repeat round one as many times as you want, to allow the kids to succeed before you continue. After both players have completed round one it’s time to level up.
Round #2
The ninja tries to catch the feather on the top of her foot. You need some space to be able to do this one.
Round #3
This time the ninja is supposed to catch the feather on his forehead. This is easier if you can drop the feather from higher up. I suggest that the adult supervising this activity can drop the feather for the kids, so that they have more time to catch the feather.
Round #4
You get more feathers and the ninja will try to catch them all. Start with 2-3 feathers to keep it fun.
To modify the game and to keep it interesting you can for example ask the ninjas to catch the feather on their knee, arm, the back of their hands or maybe ask them to catch the first one with their palm and the second one with their belly. You can drop multiple feathers at the same time and so on. And you can even make a fun “egg and spoon” race with a feather instead. Simply ask the kids to slightly cup a hand with one feather in it and then to walk a distance, and finally run without dropping it. Go crazy! It’s endless fun :-)
The Feather Ninja Mindfulness Game is a lot of fun and kids don’t even notice that they are honing their attention skills.
A big shout-out goes to Jamye Newlove for reminding me of how important physical activity is for kids ( and for dads, too ).
And another big shout-out goes to Camilla from the Seishinkai dojo for being an awesome warmhearted instructor for the kiddos and for teaching this fun mindfulness game to us!!
I hope you’ll enjoy this fun mindfulness game, we sure do :-)
In case you want more …
then 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 fun mindful moments :-)
Chris Bergstrom
Chief Mindfulness Ninja @ Blissful Kids
See also:
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.
Such a great activity! Love it and will try it! Thinking this might be a great classroom game for our Valentine’s Party at my son’s school (I’m a room parent). My son also takes Aikido and I’ve learned so much from it! I actually took some of the lessons taught and translated it into how we can learn from it in our parenting. Check it out: https://confidentparentsconfidentkids.org/2019/02/28/parenting-lessons-from-aikido-managing-power-struggles-with-skill/
Will share this! Thanks! And so appreciate your blog and important work!