Are you looking for ways to help your kids work through their thoughts and feelings? We recommend journaling! Here are some great books that will help them to express themselves creatively and encourage some mindfulness and reflection.
Find Your Happy Place: A Book of Mindful Activities
By Rodale
128 Pages | Ages 5-8 | Paperback
ISBN 9780593373705 | Rodale Kids
The ultimate mindfulness activity book for 5-8 year-olds. Includes more than 200 stickers! Jam-packed with exercises to help children manage their breath, thoughts, and feelings, this is the perfect activity book for those seeking tranquility in our turbulent times. Split over two sections that focus on mindfulness and emotions, Find Your Happy Place aims to help kids find calm, be present, and make sense of the jumble of feelings within. Each section is bursting with puzzles, games, drawing prompts, things to color, stickers, and other fun activities!
Me: A Compendium
By Wee Society
96 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780553459791 | Clarkson Potter
With design-savvy, yet completely kid-friendly illustrations, they’re asked to draw or write about a bunch of interesting things – like what their hair looks like, what their band name would be, what they’d bring to outer space, and how they feel about lightning, lizards and pickles. There may or may not be a place for super-secret stuff inside the book jacket. Whether kids complete their entire compendium on a rainy day, or finish it over a year, it’ll become a treasure to look back on and smile. Ideal for the holidays, rainy days and happy occasions of all kinds, this is an imagination-building gift will engage kids for hours on end!
Peaceful like a Panda
By Kira Willey
Illustrated by Anni Betts
96 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593179246 | Rodale Kids
These easy-to-follow exercises help kids calmly and mindfully navigate their day, from sunrise to sunset. With sections dedicated to key activities in a child’s routine – waking up, traveling, learning, playing, eating, and bedtime – kids can learn techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions anywhere, anytime. Wake up bright and sunny, no matter the weather! Explore the world around you during travel. Boost your brain before learning, Make the most of your imagination at playtime.
Q&A A Day For Kids
By Betsy Franco
368 Pages | All Ages | Hardcover
ISBN 9780307952967 | Potter Style
Children’s author Betsy Franco poses a question each day with only a few lines provided for a response, making this journal the ultimate no-fuss record keeper. Simply turn to today’s date and record your child’s answer. When you finish the year, move on to the next section. The diary can be started on any day of the year and makes a terrific keepsake or gift for parents. As the years go by you’ll notice how your child’s answers evolve, sometimes silly, sometimes precocious, but always interesting.
Wreck This Journal
By Keri Smith
224 Pages | All Ages | Paperback
ISBN 9780399161940 | Penguin Books
For anyone who’s ever had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes this expanded edition of Wreck This Journal, a subversive illustrated book that challenges readers to muster up their best mistake- and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book – or destroy them. Through a series of creative and quirky prompts, acclaimed guerilla artist Keri Smith encourages journalers to engage in destructive acts – poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting pages with coffee, coloring outside the lines, and more – in order to experience the true creative process. With Smith’s unique sensibility, readers are introduced to a new way of art- and journal-making, discovering novel ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process. To create is to destroy. Happy wrecking!
Wreck This Picture Book
By Keri Smith
64 Pages | Ages 5-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780593111024 | Dial BFYR
What if there were a book that changed every time you read it? Actually, every book does this. We are all part of the books we read, because our individual reactions, ideas, and emotions make the book whole, and these things are changing all the time. Keri Smith has helped millions of people free their creativity and find their own voice with her interactive books, and now she brings that sensibility to children and to the act of reading. This picture book is an invitation to honor your own vision and to welcome imperfection. Kids will discover that reading can engage all five senses, and that what they themselves bring to a book is an important contribution. (And of course they’ll be invited to do a bit of harmless “wrecking”!)
Yoga for Kids
By Susannah Hoffman
Foreword by Patricia Arquette
72 Pages | Ages 6-9 | Paperback
ISBN 9781465475411 | DK Children
This book is packed with yoga activities for kids and mindful games. Kids can stretch into tree pose, bend into butterfly pose, learn how to make a mindfulness jar, and find out why and how we should stretch through a series of fun yoga poses and sequences. With more than 50 poses and activities, Yoga for Kids has everything you need to know about yoga for children. Children are guided through each pose, to make sure they achieve maximum fun and mindfulness in their yoga practice. Parents are given notes on each pose, to let them know what benefits it brings and how to stay safe. Yoga for kids shows that supporting a child’s positive mental health doesn’t need to be expensive, time-consuming, or difficult. Poses and activities help children to de-stress, focus, and get moving while having fun.
