I loved writing this book although as a perpetual ‘tweaker’ I expect it would be different if I started writing it now. Those who are using this book have given me very positive feedback. I have written about it before to give an overview but this time I thought I would share a few of the (100+) activities from the book that I use with (mostly)primary aged children.
I’m a potato
I have mentioned this one before. I used this game to improve emotion vocabulary in my very first year of teaching (many decades ago) and children used to beg to play it at the end of each day! The game is simply that children can only use the words, ‘I am a potato,’ to express what they are feeling through tone of voice, body language and facial expression. The person who guesses correctly becomes the next player. Here’s the list showing different degrees of difficulty (either to perform or guess) from The Power of Emotional Intelligence.
Trigger run-around
This was a good lesson for younger children for initially exploring triggers (the idea difference occurrences/thoughts etc can bring about different emotional states) but many other activities can spring off of it (e.g. looking at different symptoms of different emotions, increasing emotion vocab, how our individual reactions are unique to us, how to cope with unenjoyable emotions, looking how emotions affect thoughts and vice versa etc.) You simply give three volunteers one of three scenarios, and ask them to mime how they would react. You state each of the scenarios, one at a time, to the rest of the class and they stand next to the person they think is miming that experience. (It is more easily done in a large space).
Happy, angry, sad or scared?
I mostly like this activity for the idioms as an extension is to explore the many idioms that are used to describe how you feel!
Just a few idioms for the way we can feel…
What does it feel like?
With this activity young children sometimes really surprise you! They can describe emotions in unusual and clever ways that maybe adults might not manage!
Name that feeling
This is an activity for older children that can get them really good at describing feelings and their impact. You can move on to creating art work based on what children think the emotion of their choice, looks, sounds, feels, tastes and feels like to the touch. In the book I suggest different pieces of music that could represent different emotions but I also got children to use musical percussion instruments to creates sounds that represent different emotions which can be very entertaining!
If emotions could talk….
This is great for older children to really tune into different emotions. You simply give them the examples and then ask pairs of children to create the speech for and (for the more confident) perform an emotion of their choice.
OK so this is a small sample of the 100 activities in the book but of course I’m going to say I’d love you to buy the book (not because it’s particularly lucrative for me – honestly) but because I totally and utterly advocate putting emotions on the agenda and this is an easy way to do it.
