Sue’s Focus Travels
LQ: 7.95
Recommended Age: 4+
Skills Used: Focus, Time Management, Mathematics, Writing
Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app. It has courses to help teach you things like mindfulness, breathing, and meditation. There is also a wide variety of guided meditations available. They cover everything from anger and stress to a racing mind. The app has several “group” guided meditations each day. Other options include meditations for kids as young as four, as well as a variety of meditations to help the user get to sleep (or fall back asleep after waking in the middle of the night).
There are a variety of different premium subscriptions available for purchase in-app. The ESRB rated Headspace E for Everyone and LW4K stands by this rating.
Headspace helps kids practice and improve the following skills:
Getting started and then maintaining attention and effort to tasks.
The acts of mindfulness and meditation require a person to be able to use their focus skills. They must be able to ignore internal and external distractions to focus their thoughts on the here and now. This is especially true when using an app with guided meditations. The user has to be able to focus on what the speaker is saying, follow the instructions, and even reflect on how they are feeling. The nice thing about Headspace is that it does a good job of stressing that the user does not have to be perfect. A wandering mind is normal and gaining focus merely takes practice.
Understanding our own actions, thoughts and feelings.
Meditation is a skill which asks the participant to look inside themselves and evaluate—or become aware of—how they feel. Headspace also asks the user to think about how they are feeling when they open the app. Are they feeling stressed, angry, impatient? Doing this allows the user to then pick a guided meditation that will help examine that emotion and gain control and acceptance of it.
All membership plans come with full access to our entire suite of tools learning guides, and resources. Here are a few of the ones we think you’ll like the most: