Nursery World - Health & wellbeing: Cultivate techniques for mindfulness

How one setting is helping children practise mindfulness to aid their wellbeing and future learning. By Annette Rawstrone

Mindfulness activities help to strengthen children’s attention span and ability to focus on a task.

Children are growing up in an increasingly fast-paced, technology-driven world that can be difficult to navigate and easily become overwhelming.

To counteract that, educators at Holly Bank Nursery in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire – winner of the Health and Wellbeing Award at the Nursery World Awards 2024 – avoid using screens in favour of focusing on the natural environment. They introduce children to simple mindfulness activities, helping support their general wellbeing.

Mindfulness is the act of living in the present moment more and being fully engaged in what is happening in the current surroundings, rather than dwelling on the past or the future. Anastasia Murphy, managing director of Portland Nurseries group, which Holly Bank Nursery belongs to, believes that practising mindfulness with young children is important because it helps them develop a ‘toolbox’ of support to use.

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