This is a poem I wrote in our ELSA Groups and it is copyright to me and should not be altered in anyway.
Put the poem near the worry monster so children are reminded what to do. Hopefully they will feel relieved once their worry is eaten by the monster. You can put this with any worry monster or even a monster that you have made out of an old tissue box.
Here are some positivity cards. There are 36 cards in the download. Print these out and cut them out and they could be used in lots of ways from discussions at circle time to a child picking one out of a jar and discussing.
This is a bee display pack with positive messages on.
Included in the pack:
31 Hexagons with messages and blanks for your own messages
A3 Bee for cutting out
Clouds
Large flowers
2 Banners
One hive
I would suggest a pale bluish background if you can so the yellow stands out. This can be made to look like the sky. The flowers could be cut out and put around the bottom or make a border of them by printing them smaller.
This is an anger scale poster or visual for display or for showing pupils who struggle with anger. It could also be put up in classrooms or work areas.
This is an anxiety scale that would be great displayed in your area or used as a talking point with your pupils.
There is a scale with suggested vocabulary and some questions they can ask themselves to help cope with those feelings.
This isolation diary booklet for children will help nurture wellbeing. They may have to stay at home for 14 days to isolate after having contact with a positive Covid case.
There are 10 daily challenges but these don’t take long to do. It is a matter of doing a bit of colouring, writing a word or number. If they can’t do them all then that is fine but the more they do the more likely they will be fully occupied on nurturing their wellbeing.
There are a couple of differentiated pages so this is suitable for all age groups.
This challenge has been made for Children’s mental health week on the theme of ‘EXPRESS YOURSELF’
It is a printable 5 day challenge with a drawing/writing task and a doing/talking task each day. There is a certificate for the end of the 5 days.
This self-esteem leaflet for parents has common sense advice to help them support their children at home. The leaflet is trifold so has six sides to them. They are to be printed duplex and instructions are given within the resource on how to do this using Adobe settings. The resource comes with a PDF to print where you can handwrite your contact details. It also has a file where you can edit the contact details in PowerPoint.
The margins do need to be cut off all the sides so the leaflet folds properly.
This leaflet covers ‘What is self-esteem?’ Strengths, talents and affirmations, advice on being specific with praise, a ‘CAN DO’ can activity, and simple goal setting.
This is a set of 6 mats for using with playdough and emotions and feelings. Although my thoughts were that these would be fab for younger children, I am sure older children would enjoy using them too. Lots of open ended fun where children can be creative and think about colours.
This is a Christmas wishes stocking booklet. Pupils can either choose a mindful colouring version or they can choose a coloured version. The aim of the activity is mindfulness and thinking about Christmas wishes.
Once the stocking is coloured, cut out and folded, pupils can write or draw their wishes inside the stocking.
This would make a fab display,
This is an idea for an ELSA Christmas advent calendar and would be a fab activity for groups of children or your one to one children. Each child can colour one or two of the booklets. Some of them require faces drawing on first. They can just colour the image or they can colour the image and background. Depends how much time you have. There are 24 little foldable books. The child can colour the front of one of the books and then write or draw something inside.
The pupil needs to understand that what they write or draw could be seen by anyone so they are writing for an audience. What could they write?
The purpose of this advent calendar is some quiet mindful time and of course positivity. This activity is ideal for that last week in November, preparing for the 1st of December.
Ideas for what you could work on:
A Christmas memory
Something you are grateful for
An act of kindness
Positive quotes about Christmas
Self care and ways to look after yourself
Positive characteristics
Relaxing moments
Positive affirmations
A gift to give someone
A joke or something to make you smile
Compliments
Once all the pieces have been coloured you can use the enclosed A3 sheet to stick the numbers on at random and close each book with a bit of bluetak. You can then use it as an advent calendar. Everyone has been involved and pupils are writing things for others to see so they need to think carefully what message they want to convey.
Of course if you want to make it very simple, they could just draw a Christmas picture inside if they want to.
This is a Halloween Pumpkin Scary words worksheet to use on the run up to Halloween. It is a great way to teach pupils about the synonyms for fear. There are so many words they can use and examples are given.
They can fill the pumpkin with words. They could use lots of colours perhaps in pumpkin colours to write the words to make it more interesting. Take every opportunity to discuss each word, what it means and when they might have felt like that.
This is a set of Scared Synonym Posters which are differentiated according to age. These all print as A3 posters.
There is one for early years, kS1 and KS2 upwards.
It is so helpful for pupils to learn vocabulary around feeling words. Being able say exactly how you feel with accuracy (Emotional granularity) can really help reduce the emotion felt.
This one is about being scared.
These would be great in your area, and a brilliant way for you to try and encourage your pupil to be more specific when they say ‘I feel scared’ You can help them to explore other words by using these posters.
This is an odd socks anti bullying poster I made for anti bullying week. It prints on A3 so is a decent size. If you want it bigger use your Adobe print settings and choose poster. You can then alter the tile scale to make it bigger.
It reminds us all that socks come in all colours and patterns and they are all different and unique.
This is a Halloween Pumpkin Scary expressions worksheet to use.
This is fab for teaching about the emotion of fear. What sort of expressions do you make when you are scared about something? Ask the pupil to draw as many as they can on the pumpkins. Black and white worksheet included too!
Children’s Mental Health Week is from 4th to the 10th February 2019 and the topic is Healthy: inside and out.
There are 104 question cards entitled ‘Looking after YOU’ covering physical, social, mental and emotional wellbeing. These cards are brilliant for a warm up before starting your session or could be used as a teaching or discussion point.