Mindful Play

Mindful Play: A Program for Developing Focusing and Listening Skills

Mindful Play (MP) was developed by John Fleming, Susan Kohen and Sheila Cliff, Educational Therapists at Developmental Learning Solutions (DLS).

John, Susan and Sheila have extensive backgrounds in teaching students of all ages and addressing the needs of students with specific learning differences. Through their work with learning-different students, as well as teaching adults at UC Santa Cruz Extension Educational Therapy Program, they developed activities to be used in educational therapy to enhance processing skills.

They became interested in developing these activities to be used in classrooms to help address specific skills in focusing and listening. Research has shown that there are benefits to learning and memory through doing these types of exercises.

The activities have several outcomes:

• teachers and students are provided simple and fun interactive experiences to develop skills that support the learning process

• activities address the cognitive development of focusing, verbal processing, auditory processing and motor skills

• eighteen activities involve a mix of whole group, small group and pair interaction

"The interactive element of the activities also provides an opportunity for students to work together and become more aware of their own learning styles. It opens them to starting to understand their potential for learning."

- John, Susan, Sheila