May is Mental Health Awareness month and it’s important to practice healthy habits that can boost mental wellness! Mental health awareness also applies to children. I was a mental health counselor for children and a teacher for several years. So I have a lot of experience understanding youth and children’s mental health. There are fun ways to implement activities to help improve mental health for children. Practicing gratitude is one of my favorite ways to improve mental health and it has so many positive benefits for children. Here are 3 simple and fun activities that you can do with your children to practice gratitude.
1). Gratitude Cards
Creating gratitude cards with your child is a fun hands-on activity. Get your crayons, markers, stickers, and paper ready! Have your child fold the paper in half. On one side of the paper your child will write a simple message of gratitude and draw a picture. Here are several examples of simple messages of gratitude:
You make me smile!
I’m grateful for you, here’s a hug!
You are the best! I’m grateful for you!
Next, have your child draw and color pictures that represent happiness to them. For example, drawing pictures of a rainbow, family, close friends, grandparents, hearts, sunshine, or flowers could represent happiness and/or gratitude. Also, be sure to include “To” and “From” on the gratitude cards. Lastly, after your child completes their cards you can hand deliver the cards to family and/or friends.
2). Gratitude Journal
Having a gratitude journal is a great way for your child to practice their writing skills. Also, this will help your child develop a love for expressing their feelings through writing. Have your child pick out a journal themselves or you can give them a journal. This is a great gratitude journal for kids The 3 Minute Gratitude Journal for Kids. The purpose of this journal will be to focus on your child being grateful and loving themselves. Also, if your child is younger and they are not comfortable writing sentences, they can opt to draw a picture based on the gratitude journal prompt. Here are additional gratitude journal prompts.
Additional Gratitude Prompts for Kids
- What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekends?
- Name someone that makes you smile.
- What is the best thing that happened today?
- What do you like most about school?
- Name a person you love and why?
- What do you like to do with your brother and/or sister?
- Name someone that helps you.
- What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
- Name someone that makes you laugh
- Talk about a funny memory
3). 7 Days of Growing Gratitude
The 7 days of growing gratitude is a great activity you can do with your whole family. Each day you’ll do a random act of kindness. For younger kids, you can give them suggestions on ways they can be kind for that day. Then at dinner time or bedtime, you can have a quick discussion on whatever random act of kindness everyone did. Doing random acts of kindness for others is a way to grow your gratitude and appreciate the simple things.
I hope these activities will help improve their child’s mindset on life and also help you connect with your child on a deeper level! Also, summer break will be here before we know it so check out my blog post Summer Schedule for Kids. This is a flexible schedule you can do with your kids during the summer!
XO,
Ashley
