Lesson by Leanne Wainwright
Learning Intentions:
- To be able to express and communicate different feelings and emotions.
- To be aware of own feelings.
Step 1: Activity overview for parent, carers and pupils
Learning to talk about how we are feeling is very important for young children.
Sharing their thoughts using emotion cards or maybe with a ‘worry doll’ can help them feel positive and gives them the invaluable opportunity to build on important life skills such as communication, self-reflection and problem solving. It can help them to recognise emotions and learn how to deal with them in an appropriate way.
It is also important for children to be able to say what they are good at and what they like about themselves. You might want to revisit the session on ‘Marvellous Me’ from last week.
- In this activity, there is an animated story video clip approximately nine minutes.
- The main activities can be competed offline and on different days.
Step 2: Introduction to the activity and additional information
Let’s start by watching the animated story of a Little Bear who can’t sleep because he is afraid of the dark. This story is called ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear’ by Martin Waddell.
- Why do you think Little bear couldn’t sleep?
- Why do you think he said he was afraid of the dark?
- What did Big Bear do to help Little Bear?
Sometimes we can worry about things and this is when it is good to tell someone about our worries, like in the story where Little Bear told Big Bear that he was afraid of the dark. Big Bear was then able to help Little Bear.
Step 3: Tasks to carry out for this activity
Activity 1 – Emotions
On a piece of paper, ask your child to draw a face that shows different emotions – happy, sad, angry, excited etc. Alternatively, you could use the Emotion Emojis below.
Once they have finished, choose a face at random.
- Can they identify the emotion?
- Can they talk about something that might make them feel that emotion?
- Can they say what they can do if they are feeling one of the negative emotions? e.g. sad, upset, cross, angry etc.
- Offer your own personal ideas to encourage them to share.
The important thing with this activity is to talk about how the different emotions make them feel and what they can do about those feelings.
Remember you can use these emotion cards at any time to help your child express their feelings particularly when they are struggling to find the words to describe how they feel.
- Below are some emotion emojis which you can print out and use if you have access to a printer.
Once you have completed the task you can email anything you create (photos, documents, screenshots etc.) directly to your teacher or directly upload it to any of the available places in Step 6.
Step 4: Look over the success criteria for this activity:
Success criteria #1: I can recognise different emotions.
Success criteria #2: I can talk about how I act when I am feeling different emotions.
Success criteria #3: I can talk about things that make me special.
Look at the learning intentions ‘how well do you think you have done?’
Step 5: Extension and follow on activities/challenges (optional)
Activity 2 – Worry doll craft
For this activity, you will need:
- Small sticks or twigs
- Wool, ribbon or thread
- Felt tip pens
The idea of a worry doll is that children can share their worries with their doll at night-time. Once they have shared their worries, they can then tuck their doll up under their pillow for the night.
The worry doll works its magic in the night and when you wake up in the morning you feel happy, calm and not as worried.
There are several ways that you can make a worry doll, it can be as creative and personal as you want it to be, you can even make a worry pet or animal if you didn’t want to make a doll.
- Click below to find various ideas and instructions on how to make your own worry doll.
Worry Doll Craft
Step 6: Upload your work
Click on the relevant link below if you have any work to upload to your online areas J2e Google Drive OneDrive Seesaw