Mindfulness resources

I have done a few mindfulness exercises in my class (usually with a chime and a prompt to students to listen carefully and then raise their hands when they can no longer hear the tone), but I decided to do more investigation this summer. I have benefited from meditation myself, and I want to teach more students some strategies for self-regulation.

A helpful book is Mindfulness for Teachers by Patricia A. Jennings. It is much more focused on teachers and their reactions than students, but since Jennings is trying to get teachers to model mindful thinking, the emphasis makes sense. There's a lot on understanding emotions and the basics of mindfulness, but it didn't get too "new age" for me and there are exercises at the end of each chapter for teachers. There's also a ton of resources at the back, including research on the effects of mindfulness in the classroom. This is definitely going into my classroom library.

When it comes to mindfulness activities for students, there's a lot of curriculum you can pay for. I was looking for something smaller in scope and hopefully free. (Since I don't have my students all day long, I really can't commit a large chunk of time.) My absolute favorite resource for this is the activity page at Mindful Teachers. There are about 25 activities excerpted from mindfulness curricula and books, and I think I can use at least half of them in my classroom. The activities are broken down by types ("Relaxation", "Five Senses", etc...) and all of them are fairly short.  I hope to use these as my go-to exercises in the fall.