Level 2: Big Feelings Unit

• Thanku: Poems of Gratitude by Miranda Paul – Want to build out your collection of poetry? This lovely book is full of poems that inspire gratitude and thankfulness.

Let’s practice strengthening our growth mindsets with this balancing STEM activity. Encourage your child to try all of their ideas without worrying so much if they will work or not. If something fails, celebrate what you learned from that failure! Then try a new idea.

(+) Want to keep the learning going? Consider adding a “brag about a failure” moment to your week. Once a week at dinner or another occasion when you’re all together, have everyone brag about a mistake they made that week and what they learned from it!

It’s not always easy to keep trying when we don’t see an immediate reward. Let’s illustrate the importance of perseverence by making these “perseverence balls” using plastic wrap and a small candy, fruit snack, or marshmallow. (Bonus: This is also a great way to strengthen fine motor skills!)

It can be a challenge to recover from a failure. Let’s learn how a famous character picked himself back up again in After the Fall, the story of how Humpty Dumpty got back up again. Then let’s try another problem solving STEM challenge with an egg drop activity! This post has great ideas to get you started. (Note: We recommend putting your eggs in plastic bags before dropping to minimize the mess!)

What is anger? What does it feel like? Let’s illustrate it with an object lesson. Start by asking your child a few questions, like:

• What kinds of things make your angry?
• How does it feel to be angry?
• What do you do with those angry feelings?

Next, take out two balloons and explain to your child that sometimes when we feel anger, we might start holding a lot of feelings inside, like fear, jealousy, frustration, resentment, etc. (As you name each emotion, add a little more air to the balloon.) These feelings can swirl around inside us, getting bigger and bigger until we feel ready to burst!

Now, ask your child what would happen if you kept adding air to the balloon. (It would either burst or escape and blow all around the room.) Demonstrate these results. Talk about the difference between the reactions and how it’s like anger. Finally, ask them what would be a safer way to get the anger out of the balloon. (Letting it out slowly!) Talk about some anger coping strategies that your family can use to deal with anger in a healthy way, and then try the next two activities.

Finding a safe, physical way to express big feelings is incredibly effective to help children self-regulate. (You can learn more about it in this post about helping your child to find a sensory rhythm for their day.) Help your child find methods to cope with anger with these animal-inspired ways to regulate emotions.

Never underestimate the power of a few deep “dragon” breaths for coping with anger. Let’s bring them to life with this fire-breathing dragon rhyme and audio recording curtesy of Calm Ahoy Kids. After listening to the audio, repeat the rhyme:

Breathe like a fierce dragon, it will do you no harm. Release the fire in your belly and conquer the castle of calm. 

Next, make a dragon craft and practice your breathing exercises with the directions below:

1. Glue and cover a toilet paper roll in green construction paper. (You can also use green paint.)
2. Layer 2 red and 2 orange sheets of tissue paper and fold into a fan. Next, cut them into strips and extend them so that they are full length. Attach clumps of tissue with glue to the inside of the toilet paper roll. (It might be helpful to staple them into 4 sections before gluing them.) ***All this folding, cutting and gluing are great fine motor skill developers but little fingers might need your help.
3. Attach googly eyes to pom poms (or cotton balls) and glue them on the opposite end of your roll. Attach 2 small green or black pom poms towards the end of the roll as nostrils.
4. Have fun roaring!

The tricky part about big feelings is that we don’t always feel them one at a time. Sometimes this mix of emotions can make us anxious, but it can be helpful to learn to identify what’s happening. Let’s illustrate how our feelings can mix with this sensory slime activity. (Note: If you’re not a slime person—we get it!—you can do the same thing by mixing playdough or colored rice in a sensory bin.)

Do you ever feel worried or anxious? Let’s illustrate the power of these ‘what if’ thoughts with the food coloring activity in this post. Now, let’s focus on our courage by making the bravery shield in the same post.

For our art lesson this week, we’ll take a closer look at an artist who embodied bravery in many different ways—Frida Kahlo! Start by watching this brief video about her life and all she overcame as an artist. Frida was especially famous for her self-portraits, like this one with her parrots. Next, let’s make our own Frida Kahlo-inspired self-portrait collages. We’ll use this idea for our inspiration. Start by having your child draw some of their favorite things. These can be foods, people, pets, hobbies—whatever makes them feel happy and brave! Next, have them draw a self-portrait. Cut the items and the portrait out and let your child layer them into a self-portrait collage like you see in the example. They may also want to add flowers or other 3-dimensional items to decorate their portraits!

(+) Feeling crafty? These felt flower crowns are also inspired by Frida Kahlo’s work—and they’re great for inspiring imaginative play.

Can the words we say and things we do affect others? Let’s illustrate it with a “wrinkled heart” activity. Start by cutting out a heart shape from a piece of cardstock or construction paper. Ask your child to think of unkind things they could say or do to another person. As you make the list, have your child fold or crinkle the paper a bit with each thought or action. Next, ask them to smooth out the paper. (They won’t be able to smooth it completely.) Explain that this is how words and actions affect other people—often you can’t completely take back the hurtful result, so it’s better to think how we could affect someone else before speaking or taking action.

Kindness paper chain. This can be a great activity to keep going throughout the year. Each time your child does a kind deed or experiences an act of kindness, add a link! At the end of the school year, see how many acts of kindness you have been a part of.

Let’s use our powers of creativity and engineering for good with this empathy invention STEM challenge.

Need a quick act of kindness to get your paper chain started? Bake up some of these simple cookies to share with a friend or neighbor. (Note: Any cookie recipe will do here, so use whatever one works best for your family!)

If you purchased the Thanku poetry book, save a few cookies for some gratitude-themed Tea + Poetry!

Gratitude tree craft.

Let’s show a little gratitude while working on handwriting with these printable thank-you notes.

As your child writes their cards, let’s end our week with a fun song about being grateful for friendship! This song is called “Thank You for Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold (though grownups might know this version a little better!). 😉