As a teacher, and parent, I’m always looking for activities that children are drawn to that are calming and engaging. Activities that they enjoy doing, but at the same time relax their mind and body. This calming activity for kids is great to work on fine motor skills while creating a piece of art.
I created this calming activity after I did a science experiment with my children and my students at school. The kids loved the activity, but what I noticed was how quiet the room was during the activity and many children commented how calming it was to create. From this activity I created these calming activity pages.
This project requires only a few simple supplies and can be used over and over again. I created a few simple designs as well as a feelings page for children to create their picture on.
For more calming and mindful activities for children to try at home or at school, visit, 53 Mindful Activities for Kids.
Calming Activity for Kids Materials
This is a great activity to do over and over again. You will need:
- Free Printable Sheets
- Laminator or Page Protectors
- Eye Droppers/Pipettes
- Cups with Water
- Food Coloring or Paint
- Paper Towels, for Clean Up!
There are five printable pages available at the bottom of the post. You can subscribe, through Grow, and unlock the pages to download. There are four pages to fill in/color and one Feelings page.
Print and either laminate or place the pages into page protectors for the activity.
Calming Activity for Kids Set Up
To set up the activity, make sure to have as many copies of the pages laminated as children you have doing the activity. I suggest providing the variety of the pages for children to choose from.
Next, fill cups or containers half full with water and then add food coloring. Create as many colors as you wish. Children can also mix, on their page, to make more colors.
Provide an eye dropper for each child. If you have younger children doing the activity, you can provide an eye dropper for each cup to help avoid color mixing.
Avoid using folded, crinkled or rippled pages. Make sure to keep them flat. If they are bent, the water will roll off the page and children will not be able to create a picture. If your page is bent, you can use tape to secure the page to a table.
Set out the colored water, eye droppers and printed pages and you’re ready to begin!
Relaxing Activity for Kids
If your children are younger doing the activity, I suggest having them practice making one drop at a time with the eye dropper in one of the small circles on the page. I have used eye droppers in kindergarten for many years and children figure out how to use them very quickly!
Children can use any color or color combination to fill in their picture. They can create patterns with the drops and beautiful images.
Focusing on making single drops at a time to fill each circle requires children’s attention and a steady hand. As children watch their drops stay in tact on their page, they will notice their picture taking form.
Children can mix drops to create new colors and play around with how to fill each circle without going outside of it.
Social Emotional Printable
Since I teach a lot of mindful, relaxation lesson in my classroom, I wanted to incorporate our learning about emotions and feelings into this calming activity for kids. One of the pages included, for free, is a page with feelings/faces.
Each of the faces shows a different emotion that we feel. Children use the colored water and eye droppers to fill in the face with the same colored water. It’s a great way to incorporate recognizing these emotions.
You can also talk to children about each of the emotions as they fill them in. You can talk about a time they felt each emotion.
Calming Activity for Kids Extension Idea
You can also use this activity for an art activity. Instead of providing children with six colors of water, only give them three cups with the primary colors (red, blue and yellow). Children then have to mix to make other colors on their page. A few drops of red in a circle plus one drop of blue will make a beautiful purple.
This is an easy way to mix some art and color theory into their learning.
When children are done their page, I suggest taking a picture of their creation. Since they can’t keep the page, a photo is a great way to keep their work. When they are done, the best way to clean up is to encourage children to use their eye droppers to suck up each drop and put it back in each cup! My students had a lot of fun doing this and watching as their picture disappeared.
Once most of the drops are off the page, a paper towel can easily dry the rest of the liquid off.
Free Printables Download
Subscribe to Play Learn Inspire and download the printable calming pages for this activity featured above.
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