Looking for some calm in the chaos? Mindfulness is the key, but sometimes it feels out of reach. That's where sensory tools step in. Mindfulness tools are a fantastic resource for kids (and adults!) who are looking to slow down busy minds and reduce stress and anxiety. From weighted blankets to gel timers, below are 23 of our favorite sensory tools for practicing mindfulness.
1 Mindful Breathing Kitty/Puppy Light
Our Mindful Breathing Lights are a kid-friendly sensory tool that teaches children a variety of deep breathing exercises. This engaging and helpful tool features lighted inhale and exhale prompts: kids inhale as the light brightens and exhale as it fades. Plus, it can double as a nightlight with 5 different colors! This neat mindfulness light features 3 different breathing settings, a silent timer that can be set for 5 to 30 minutes, and includes a USB cord that charges the built-in battery. Comes in a puppy or kitty design.
2. Mandala Labyrinth Tracing Discs - Sturdy 8” tracing disks are a mesmerizing fine motor finger skills tool that are very focusing, calming, and relaxing for most individuals! Just select a path and begin tracing with the included stylus or your finger, there’s no beginning or end... no right or wrong way to play. An endlessly re-usable alternative to coloring and stress-free way to keep restless fingers and minds engaged in a very soothing way.
3. Mindful Kids Cards for Focus and Calm - Delightful mindfulness activity card set for kindness, focus, and calm! This wonderful "kit" is amazing for teaching children, teens, and adults how to build empathy, manage everyday emotions, while promoting how to become mindful (the ability to be fully present, aware, and paying attention – with kindness and patience – to what's going on inside and around you without becoming overwhelmed!). Includes: 50 beautiful 5"x7" coated cards with gorgeous graphics, step-by-step directions on the back of each card for the easy-to-follow games, activities, and meditations designed to support you thru each part of the day.
4. Skill Building Sensory Gel Pad - Our Skill Building Sensory Gel Pad combines academic fun with calming deep pressure sensory input! This marvelous multisensory learning tool features 8 divided columns, 30 glistening marbles in 6 different colors, and a worksheet pocket on the back. Work on counting, sequencing, colors, motor planning, eye-hand skills, more. Best of all, it doubles as one fun weighted lap pad!
5. Color Mixing Sensory Tubes - Wonderfully soothing 8" sensory tubes that contain 2 colors that bubble and mix when you shake, turn, or invert them... then watch as they slowly separate back to their original 2 colors! Color Mixing Tubes provide a fun and silent way to relieve stress, decrease anxiety, take a short re-focusing / re-set break, and help calm active bodies and/or busy minds. These calming sensory tools feature a durable, leakproof, very easy-to-grip design.
6. Scented Weighted Plush Elephant - This delightful Scented Weighted Plush Elephant is wonderfully soft and cuddly! Weighing in at about 2 lbs., this snuggly 12" weighted animal is scented with the perfect touch of soothing lavender. The therapeutic combination of deep pressure weighted input and the soft lavender scent helps calm and organize the nervous system of wiggly kiddos who struggle to sit still. This lovable furry stuffed animal makes a nice tactile sensory fidget tool for naps or bedtime, and provides all the benefits of a weighted lap pad for car rides, homework time, or waiting rooms. Surface washable. Also comes in a variety of other animal options.
7. Doodle & Trace Weighted Lap Pad - Children use the included water pens to write and draw on this one-of-a-kind write-on lap pad; the marks fade, then disappear as it dries. This unique 3 lb sensory handwriting tool features (very subtle) traceable letters and numbers on one side, and a blank drawing canvas on the other. These intriguing lap pads make a fun and functional calming tool for therapy sessions, classroom use, waiting rooms, for long car rides, and for an entertaining toy for home playrooms. Ideal for wiggly kiddos who need deep pressure weighted sensory input to help boost focus, concentration that helps them sit and stay on tasks longer.
8. Shashibo Fidget - Endless, intriguing, screen-free fun! This award-winning, shape-shifting cube twists and turns inside out into over 70 different mesmerizing shapes! This brain bending fidget tool hypnotizes senses with its brilliant colors, kaleidoscopic designs, and a satisfying clicking sound it makes as it "snaps" into place. A wonderful choice for individuals who struggle with OCD, ADD, ADHD, anxiety disorders, trichotillomania, dermatillomania – and for visual sensory seekers who like calming focusing visual sensory input.
9. Simple Mindful Practices for Everyday Life - Bring awareness, calm, and balance to your life with this lovely set of easy-to-use mindfulness cards that feature simple, easy-to-implement practices in everyday life. These neat 3-1/2"x5-1/2", color-coded cards help promote personal reflection, kindness, insight, relaxation, and joy. Each card has an inspiring phrase on the front and a bite-sized mindfulness exercise on the back. Select a single card each morning to form an intention for the day or pull several cards to promote a variety of mindfulness activities throughout the week. Some of our testers shared they loved displaying cards that "spoke to them" or fit their situation – around their homes, offices, clinics, and classrooms. Simple Mindful Practices Cards provide an simple, engaging, nourishing way to cultivate peaceful mindful moments – anytime and anywhere.
10. Blue Comfy Cozy Sensory Canoe - Our sensational Calming Sensory Canoes are a soothing deep pressure sensory tool for home, school, therapy clinics, quiet corners, libraries, and other places where a calming sensory tool might be needed. Perfect for quiet breaks to help "reset" nervous systems, preventing sensory overload, and for decreasing stress or anxiety. A fun and easy way to help children maintain that "just right" level of alertness.
11. Mindfulness Finger Mazes - Soothing finger tracing mazes that calm restless bodies and help slow down active minds. This dazzling set includes 3 double-sided finger tracing boards with assorted grooved finger paths; 6 different patterns in all. All very durable and colorful 7"x7" mazes that promote focus, mindfulness, and breathing/breath patterns. You can even use them with small marbles.
12. Sensory Fidget Tubes - Help slow down busy minds and keep active bodies calm with this neat set of soothing sensory fidget tubes! This mesmerizing set includes: a gravity spinner, sparkly upside down hourglass, a push-button swirler, and a shimmering glittery fidget tube! These 8" silent fidget tools provide a fun and engaging way to relieve stress, decrease anxiety, and take a short brain/body re-focusing break.
13. Color Changing Salt Cube Light - Beautiful remote-controlled light features 16 soothing colors, adjustable brigtness levels, 4 special effects (flash, strobe, fade, smooth), and Himalayan salt stones in the lower compartment that lights up! These visually soothing multi sensory tools provide calming visual input that can can help facilitate self-regulation
14. Wooden Spiral Maze Tracing Board - Premium 2-sided wooden tracing board features a grooved spiral on one side and a grooved square maze on the other! Trace the mazes with your fingertips or the wood stylus; with or without the included wooden marbles. Or hold the board with both hands and gently tilt it to roll the marbles thru the mazes. A peaceful way to relax while engaging your fingers and mind; most find this neat mindfulness board to be calming and focusing.
15. ZenSwirl Fidget - This mesmerizing fidget toy transports fidgeters on a journey to a calmer, more focused you! ZenSwirl features 5 beautifully bright, curvy "nesting" pieces that glide & slide around onto the next color. An intriguing, brain-stimulating fiddle that will keep you entertained for hours!
16. Sensory Gel Timers Sampler™ - Our Sensory Gel Timers Sampler™ includes 9 visually mesmerizing gel timers that all contain beautifully colored, moving gel. 27-piece classroom set includes 3 of each of the 9 timers. Some of the timers have other intriguing moving parts. An exclusive Therapy Shoppe® sampler kit available only from therapyshoppe.com.
17. Wooly Weighted Bunny - This lovable fuzzy furry bunny has a wooly "shearling" (lamb-like) coat and soft plaid flannel print on his belly. Kids adore this fun new plush weighted animal that loves sitting on shoulders and laps! Wooly Weighted Bunny is a fabulous new self-regulation sensory tool for providing just the right touch of weighted and proprioceptive deep pressure input (that can be so helpful for calming, focusing, and regulating to children's nervous systems).
18. Calming Lazy 8 Tracing Stickers - Discreet new calming sensory tools you can stick onto notebooks, workstations, computers, the back side of smartphones, under desks or tables . . . just about any smooth surface! These slightly gritty, touchy-feely tactile stickers are designed to promote deep breathing, focus, and relaxation. Calming Lazy 8 Tracing Stickers feature a pretty colored figure-8 infinity pattern with directionality arrows and written "breathe in / out" cues. Repeatedly tracing the therapeutic Lazy 8 (especially combined with deep breathing) can help relax busy minds, slow down restless fingers, while activating both sides of the brain to work together.
19. Self Calming Cards - These engaging picture cards are a fun and effective way for kids to learn different self-calming techniques. The illustrated 36-card deck features 24 self-calming tool cards in 6 categories: physical, visual, auditory/verbal, creative, self-nurturing, and humor. On the back of each card there's a child-friendly scenario of the tool, and directions for teaching the strategy (written in both English and Spanish). Twelve additional cards provide activities and games that help reinforce learning the calming strategies.
20. Build Your Own Sensory Gel Pad Set - Neat multisensory set lets you build your own custom calming sensory gel pad that can double as a weighted lap pad! Just fill the pad with the colorful playing shapes and liquid of your choice (like liquid soap, shaving cream, water, gel, shampoo, etc) – and you're ready to play! The jumbo size valve makes it easy to fill, drain, and refill! Kids use their fingers to push and manipulate the shapes free style, or to "play" one of the activities on activity cards (which fit in a handy sleeve on the back of the pad).
21. Solid Wood Lazy 8's Tracing Board - Heirloom-quality Lazy 8's tracing board made of solid maple wood with an all-natural, non-toxic wood finish. Tracing a Lazy 8 pattern is known for activating both brain hemispheres and encouraging them to work together. This beautiful quality 7" x 14" tracing board also includes a set of small wooden balls and a wooden tracing stylus. Start out tracing the lateral 8 with your finger, progressing to tracing with the stylus, and later incorporating the marbles. Or hold the board with both hands and tilt it to roll the marbles thru the sideways figure 8 maze.
22. Velvety Vibrating Cushions - Velvety soft pressure-activated, vibrating sensory cushion that can double as a furry soft sensory seat or pillow. Provides an easy and comfy way to provide self-regulating tactile sensory input that's so calming and soothing for most tactile sensory seekers (or for individuals who are hypersensitive to touch and textures). Features bumpy minkee on one side; ridged minkee on the other (in 3 different colors).
23. Gel Waves Tactile Pad - This one-of-a-kind sensory-squeezy fine motor play pad features 2 side-by-side sparkling gel waves that both contain small plastic discs that kids manipulate through the squishy gel waves! Our tactile gel wave pad is great for bilateral coordination, tactile stimulation, strengthening, finger awareness, visual tracking skills, and providing proprioceptive input to fingers. This dazzling blue and yellow gel wave pad doubles as a mega multisensory, squishy weighted lap pad!
More articles you might enjoy:
Simple Calming Deep Pressure Activities You Can Do At Home
25 Soothing Sensory Tools That Can Help Alleviate Anxiety
The Benefits of Weighted Blankets for Kids with Special Needs and Safe Usage Tips
Mindfulness at Home: Tips and Tricks for Children with Special Needs