This half term our Living and Learning lessons are based around the MindMate learning themes of emotions and friendships.
Our first lesson was based around strong emotions and exploring and describing how it feels to be sad/unhappy.
We thought about how others might express feelings of unhappiness and if they did feel unhappy, to practise asking, and listening to, others about what makes them unhappy.
We reinforced that everyone feels sad or unhappy at times and that’s natural.
In our circle time on the same theme, the children suggested some things to do if they were feeling sad.
Would it help if…
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you played with a friend or brother or sister
- you did something you enjoyed
- you did some exercise
As part of this lesson, we did two of the mindfulness exercises taken from this website. The children enjoyed this very much and focussed excellently.
In the second lesson, we started by working together to match emotions to the pictures and explaining the choices.
We recognised all the emotions from our own lives and that a person’s facial expressions often say how they are feeling. We also discussed how our bodies might change in other ways when we feel strong emotions (clenched fist, red cheeks etc..)
This video of two friends shows lots of characteristics of a good friendship and a healthy relationship. Friends do have fall outs and we talked about what to say to someone who is feeling upset because they have fallen out with a friend, being teased or is feeling left out.
This was done by putting themselves in their shoes.
Help at home – ask your child to practise what they might say to someone who is being teased or feeling left out.
