This resource is helpful for building a sense of identity and self esteem.
Instructions for making up the resource are included in the downloadable pack.
Activities consist of:
Creating a superpower to help people
Creating a superhero name
Designing your superhero
How it makes you feel to use your superpowers to help someone
Comparing your favourite superhero to yourself – same and different
The Superhero emotion characters have all been drawn by myself.
The crafts are very simple. It is the process that is important. Children relax when they are working on a craft and to be honest I do not know of a child who does not enjoy crafts especially when it is with someone who is interested in them and interested in what they say. They will open up to you and talk freely whilst enjoying themselves. These activities are also perfect for an ELSA or Teaching assistant who has to do a one off session with a child or who has to work reactively to a situation. Also can be used for whole class activities at Christmas time.
When children succeed in an activity then their self efficacy increases. They begin to believe in themselves. Along with your encouragement and praise they will begin to have a ‘can do’ attitude. It takes time but if anyone ever says to you that what you are doing is just ‘crafting and having fun’ WHAT are they learning? You can tell them.
The resource includes:
Card crafts (20 activities)
Templates (17 templates or resources)
Front cover, contents sheet
Teach children about the six basic emotions with these booklets and games. Angry, sad, happy, scared, disgust and surprise.
Can be used on a one to one basis, with a group or even a whole class. Use the sheets as worksheets or lessons for every child.
Great for ELSA intervention or for Learning mentors or Teaching assistants.
Also a set of superhero fans thrown in to help with emotional regulation.
Here are some emotion faces based on Christmas characters.
This resource can be used in many different ways. Laminate the ‘face sheet’ and then laminate all the expression and vocabulary cards. Cut out the expression and vocabulary cards. Use a blob of bluetac to stick items onto the face. Add a whiteboard pen, a mirror and some playdough to extend the use of this resource.
All images have been drawn by myself.
6 Monster Character posters
There are six monsters in the pack with key vocabulary. There is a monster for each basic emotion- happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised and disgusted. Each monster is a character. We have:
Angry Adam
Disgusted Doug
Happy Hannah
Sad Simon
Scared Sophie
Surprised Sam
Each character is displayed on one page which can then be printed as A3 or A4 to create your display. The character is asking ���How do you feel today?’ Alongside the monster is some key vocabulary. It is so important for children to learn other emotion words too so they can express their feelings.
6 Monster character cards
There are also some smaller cards (2 per page) which you can print as A4 or A3 depending on how big you want your cards to be. Each monster is holding a card for the child to write or draw on. The idea is that the child can choose which monster they feel like. They can then write or draw why they feel like that.
7 Banners
There are also 7 banners to choose from. Each one having a different colour so you can choose the colour you would like to use. These are in PDF format so to print as a banner you will need to change the settings. Everyone’s printer is different so it is difficult to give instructions but on my computer I choose poster print, and reduce the percentage to 75%. This prints over 3 pages which you can then stick together to form your banner. Obviously you could print it bigger or smaller by changing your settings.
6 emotion cards
Each character on a separate card. (4 per page).
Writing paper for each character (write your own title/question)
Drawing paper for each character (write your own title/question)
Speech bubble, thinking bubble and comic strip
This is a display and resource pack but it doesn’t stop just at displays. These cards could be used as a teaching tool too:
You could do a circle time each week concentrating on one character. All emotions work could be on that one character for the week.
Children could have a go at creating their own characters for each emotion. Use the drawing paper included in the pack.
Write your own scenarios on the monster cards to help children relate to the emotion.
Make up stories of why ‘Doug is disgusted’ or ‘Adam is angry’. Use the writing paper included in the pack.
Draw comic strips showing why ‘Sophie is scared’. (A comic strip is included in the pack).
Use to model emotional regulation. Tell the children ‘I feel like Angry Adam today because…’ What should I do about that? How can I calm down?
There are lots of activities you can do with this pack. Perfect for early years or SEN.
The Mind Monsters Fan Pack is a perfect resource for especially young children to identify their feelings. It is based on the 6 basic emotions of happy, sad, angry, scared, disgusted and surprised. It is also suitable for children with SEN and even older children will love the characters.
There are 3 levels of fans.
The first one just shows the monster on its own for children to relate to the face and facial expression.
The second one shows the name of the Monster – Angry Adam, Sad Simon, Surprised Sam, Happy Hannah, Scared Sophie and Disgusted Doug. This will help children to label the emotion by the name and the expression.
The third level has a scale of 1-5 for children to begin to scale their emotions. How sad are they? Are they a tiny bit sad or very very sad?
There are more Mind Monster resources, please check my store.
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 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.
The child can have fun with this by colouring a section of the rainbow each day. I wonder what it will look like when finished. Which mood will be the most popular mood?
Great for home learning
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.
These breathing exercise wheels are great as a prompt for trying different breathing techniques when feeling anxious.
Pupils can use their favourite or try different ones.
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 a completely free resource that can be used to get to know children who will be starting school in September. Of course that all depends on the current situation. It is a booklet that was asked for from a Learning mentor who needed something to send home to parents to find out as much as possible about their child. With the current situation home visits won’t be possible. That may change in the next few months but at least you have something you can use.
Obviously the parent and child would do this together. There are simple assessments such as colouring in, drawing themselves, drawing an emotion face, writing letters and numbers. Use as many or as few of the sheets as you want to.
Parents if you are reading this then make sure there is no pressure on your child to write, draw etc but let them have a go or scribe what they say.
The four basic emotions are covered – happy, sad, angry and scared
You will find that most other emotions have a base here. For example worried can come under scared, excited can come under happy, upset can come under sad and furious can come under angry. Learning these 4 first can help develop other emotions in time.
Print out a copy for each day.
Ask your child how they are feeling today?
Ask them to colour the relevant picture, chances are it will be ‘happy’ most of the time initially and this is fine. You are helping them get into the habit of talking about feelings.
Ask them to draw their face showing that emotion, use a mirror to help them see their face and have fun making different expressions.
Then ask them to talk about it and draw a picture if they want to. If they don’t then just jot down what they have said. You want them to articulate their feelings and talking about it is a great way to do that!
In time you will find your child becoming more open and talking more about their feelings. Please make sure you model this too e.g. ‘I feel sad today because it’s raining outside’. ‘I feel happy today because I talked to my friend’. Also make sure you verbalise their emotions too and give a reason. ‘I see you are feeling sad today because…’ ‘I see you are feeling angry today because…’ and so on.
Great for home learning
These are just image files with a transparent background so you can basically use just like you would an image. The beauty of these is the transparent background so you can overlay them over basically anything. There are 11 image files in the pack. You can insert them into anything where you can insert a photo or graphic.
You could add to some work you are marking for a child
You could add as an attachment to a child you are emailing
You could add to a photograph, there are lots of apps out there that you can do this with but will show you a simple way with PowerPoint. I think most people have that!
You could add it to a little note you are sending to a child in word
You could even make a sheet of real stickers if you want to by pasting into a word document and then printing on ‘sticker paper’.
You can resize them from small to HUGE. The image quality is 300dpi so perfect for enlarging too.
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.