Lesson 1

As ‘Healthy, Confident Individuals’ we are learning to: build our mental and emotional well-being by developing confidence, resilience and empathy.

To start our project, we think about the different emotions and feelings we often experience. One thing that makes us all different is our emotions and how we might react to things in different ways as people experience different feelings in different ways.

Usually, something happens to make our brains work in a certain way. This could be a thought inside us or something that has happened around us. Ask the children list types of emotions.

Write the word ‘sadness’ on the board and ask the children to discuss what the word means.

Discuss: What are sad thoughts? When might we feel sad? What makes you sad?

Suggested Task: If sadness was a colour, what colour would it be? Why? What might sadness look like? Where in your body do you feel sadness? The children could draw a ‘sad monster’. If your sadness had a colour, what would it be? Use that colour to show on the monster where in your body you might feel your sadness. Around the monster, the children could list sad thoughts they’ve had and write about what makes/made them sad.

Loss has become a daily encounter for many during the Covid-19 pandemic, whether it be loss of a loved one or loss of experience.

Discuss: What do you feel you’ve missed out on during the pandemic? What experiences might you have missed out on? How might that make you/others feel? Did you feel sad during lockdown? When?

Suggested Activity: Create an emotions line graph to show how you felt during different periods of lockdown.

There are so many picture books available, especially for younger pupils that help them to think and talk about sadness.

When Sadness Comes To Call by Eva Eland

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas

Sad Book by Michael Rosen’s (KS2)