Sessions and activities to use with your groups

Supporting our children and young people to talk about and understand their emotions is a great place to start. Here are some resources and ideas to help you do just that.

Session plans

• The Find Your Feet initiative from Young Minds aims to help children and young people express their thoughts and feelings about change. It is primarily designed to help with the transition from primary to secondary school but the resources and activities can have wider applications. You can download session plans for primary school and also for secondary school. There are also supporting resources available via BBC Bitesize and a 30-minute activity that helps children and young people to identify their support networks.
• Visit the Young Minds resource section for lots of extra activity ideas that are designed for teachers but easily adaptable for a youth work setting.

Activity ideas

Here are a number of easy activities you can do with your children and young people to help them explore and understand their emotions, particularly in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Download this PDF to facilitate a conversation about how we all have 'stress buckets' that might overflow from time to time if we don't take care of ourselves. 
• You could try watching some videos together that explain anxiety or the 'fight or flight' reaction we have when we're scared. Then have a conversation about what might have been happening to our bodies and minds during the pandemic or our return to school. Some suggested videos include Fight, flight or freeze - a guide to anxiety for kids (2 mins 12 secs),  and Why do we lose control of our emotions? (6 mins, 47 secs), which is probably more suited for older young people.