The activities...
Write letters
Kindness can feel a bit tricky sometimes, but writing a letter is a great way to express and experience this.
We’ve heard of some super stories where tamariki have written letters to people in retirement villages or sister city schools overseas AND then received letters back! We know of one school that has formed a tight friendship with a local retirement home as a result!
So why not encourage tamariki to share the love by writing letters - or drawing pictures? So easy!
Emotions in colour
If you’re familiar with Zones of Regulation and some of our mahi, Emotions in Colour, you’ll know the huge benefits of using colour to represent, identify and kōrero about emotions with tamariki.
It's always an awesome time for tamariki to be able to reach for simple ways to kōrero about how they’re feeling. Here's our poster to help with this.
Ask tamariki to identify their emotional colour right now – the kupu may not be important at all to them, and that’s absolutely fine. Explain that their emotions or colour may change moment to moment and throughout the day and that all feelings are ok and all feelings are important.
If your tamariki are used to this way of working, a simple activity idea might be to ask them to think about how they feel at the moment, what colour represents that best, then look for this colour around them. This is a great time to head outside – ask them to draw or take photos of things that are this colour and might also show or represent their feelings or emotions right now.
Perhaps too they could write a poem about their feeling colour, and what they’ve seen or found.
A poetry template might be:
I feel (colour) __________
I’m as __(colour)__ as/like _______
My senses notice_______
I see _______
I hear _______
Wellbeing workbook
A bit of printing involved, but whatever you choose here for tamariki will support them to feel good. A great beginning or end of day reflection.
Here's the full workbook ready to go.
Shadow art
On one of sunny days, line up toys (toy animals and dinosaurs work well) in the sunshine so their shadows hit the pavement and draw these in.
This might add to heaps of other shadow art…
- Shadows of each other
- Shadows of the natural environment
- Shadows of hands, moving - butterflies
- Puppet shadows…
A great excuse to head outside!
