Your Mindful Garden

Developed with a mindfulness consultant, and available now for free in the CBeebies Go Explore app, it lets little ones discover three fun activities each day that introduce focus, creativity and calm.

Your Mindful Garden teaches valuable techniques to help children de-stress and unwind – useful skills both in these tough times and for later in life.

Your Mindful Garden gives children three daily activities to complete, each one addressing a different aspect of mindfulness: focus, creative and calm. Whether it’s playing hide and seek with the CBeebies bugs or helping some friendly fish to pick up colourful scales, the focus activities aid concentration, and in turn help to clear and relax the mind.

The creative activities include recalling happy memories to grow a feelings flower, or calming the mind by raking patterns in a zen garden.

The final activity of each day is always something calming. From learning to stretch with a new monkey friend to breathing along with a frog, it’s all about learning valuable techniques that can help improve children’s wellbeing.

When starting Your Mindful Garden for the first time, little ones are asked to dig a hole to plant their own mindfulness tree. Completing the three daily activities gets them a surprise for their tree, with a new reward available to make their tree look more exciting every day.

Stephen Fry says: “It was such a pleasure to be involved with a simple, but beautifully designed idea like this. I hope and believe that many children will find the game fun, engaging and helpful in their journeys through life.”

Rachel Bardill, executive editor, BBC Children’s, says: “Giving kids the tools they need to help them prepare for school and beyond is at the heart of Go Explore, and Your Mindful Garden is a really fun way for children to discover mindfulness from an early age.

“Any parent knows that learning to focus, be creative and keep calm are important at any age – and growing their mindfulness tree gets children off to a great start with this.”

This mindfulness experience is the newest addition to the Go Explore app, which comes packed with activities helping children to develop life skills and prepare them for primary school. Featuring characters from Alphablocks, Hey Duggee and Go Jetters, the Go Explore app draws on the Early Years curriculum.

Following the launch of a whole new children’s iPlayer experience, as well as an expanded education offering across BBC Bitesize, iPlayer, Sounds, Red Button and BBC Four, Your Mindful Garden is the latest part of the BBC’s commitment to keep children educated and entertained during these unprecedented times.

Your Mindful Garden was developed by BBC Children’s and Mobile Pie with the help of a mindfulness consultant. Download the Go Explore app now via the Apple, Google Play and Amazon app stores.