Emotional Rollercoasters: Hands-On Social-Emotional Learning

We begin this class by checking in with how we are feeling on a scale of one to five (shown with fingers or verbalised) in terms of how BIG our feelings are at the moment. Hopefully we are around a 2-3 - not bored or sleepy, but not feeling too emotional. I will show some faces, and we will identify how each person might be feeling based on their expression. We begin with "happy" and end with "proud" so as to keep the mood up! We normalise that everyone feels big feelings sometimes, and that is okay. It is important to know how to respond when we feel the big feelings starting to grow so we can help ourselves return to calm more easily. 

We explore a few different feelings and discuss what might make us feel that way and strategies we have to support ourselves and others when we feel that way. We begin and end this segment with a positive feeling. We co-construct a poster for each, which I share with families after class for children to review and add to if they like. 

We affirm that everyone feels up and down throughout the day and experiences smaller and big emotions throughout our week, just like a rollercoaster goes up and down. This is normal and healthy. In the second part of the class, we will design and build our own emotional rollercoasters representing this. I will show an example of my own and demonstrate steps along the way, but learners are free to engage their own creativity to use whatever materials and design methods they like. This is not a step-by-step crafting class in which the end product looks the same for everyone. I will offer as much or as little guidance with the steps of the physical creation of the rollercoaster as each learner wishes. 

Finally, we will share our rollercoasters and discuss the choices we made, e.g. why we see certain feelings as "higher" or "lower" than others and what colours or images we chose to use to represent the feelings. 

This lesson fits well in conjunction with the Zones of Regulation, if your family or school is learning about this, but experience with the Zones is not necessary. The Zones will not be taught during this class. I am not affiliated with the Zones of Regulation or with Leah Kuypers, MA ED., OTR/L. To learn more about the Zones, visit this website: https://www.zonesofregulation.com/index.html

I noticed recently there are a lot of searches on Outschool for “mindfullness.” (Note spelling.) I am adding this word into my description to make sure the class appears for “mindfullness” as well as “mindfulness.”