Happiness is a Choice

"Happiness is a choice. Be happy." That's the essential message of Yabuki's picture book.  To illustrate life's struggles and the actions that can help them seem less daunting, she presents a series of photographs featuring a small, whitish rock named Ishi, with dot eyes and a mouth that changes to reflect its mood.This book encourages others to choose and share happiness. This book can be used in a variety of groups such as emotion regulation or social skills. After reading and discussing mindfulness the story, group members can make their our own rock friends that could remind them to be happy and spread kindness. 

Resources to Teach Children about Feelings

Aaron Wiemeier and youthlight have again teamed up to provide counselors a resource to teach children important concepts regarding emotions. The new curriculum guide Building Emotional Intelligence focuses on 8 concepts regarding feelings. The curriculum is designed for schools with each of the 46 skill-based lessons taking 20-30 minutes. The curriculum develops self-awareness, motivation, empathy, self-regulation, and social skills. I love the use of the wind metaphor in lesson one (can't see it but we know it is there) taught using a pinwheel. My other favorite is lesson 14 - Coping Tool Versus Coping Skill. We introduce tools to children a lot in counseling but do not practice them enough so they become skills. This guide has many great lessons to teach healthy coping skills. I think this curriculum could be used in small groups and in classroom lessons. Some of the lessons could also be led by teachers in morning meetings if those are done in your school. This is best curriculum guide I have seen this year, I highly recommend it!

My Feelings Workbook, Wiemeier's earlier book, can be used for additional extension activities.  This resource can be especially useful when working with children who are experiencing intense emotions such as after a traumatic event.

Coping Skills

If you run groups for kids with emotion regulation difficulties this might be a good workbook for your collection. Janine Halloran, a mental health counselor, has organized coping skills in to 4 categories: calming, distraction, physical, and processing. For each category she offers close to 20 techniques to explore. Kids need a variety of coping skills because different types of coping skills will work at different times, in different places, and for different stressors. For example, the goal of the calming exercises is to get from "flight, fight or freeze mode" back to the "rest and digest" mode. She offers many fun types of breathing and grounding activities.  The sills in this workbook are very familiar but they are well organized and explained in a clear manner.T he book concludes with a suggestion for writing coping skills cards. I have pulled several exercises from this book for my groups and a few to send home to families to practice.

Great resources from Magination Press

One of my favorite publishers is Magination Press (American Psychological Association)  http://www.apa.org/pubs/magination These are two of the books I got this year. I love Move Your Mood to emphasize how moving can help you self-regulate and improve your mood. Bye Bye Pesky Fly is perfect for an emotion regulation group or a class lesson on dealing with frustration. Check their site frequently because they publish new books often and most of them are great additions to the school counselors bookshelf.

Emotion regulation tool

The experience of emotions includes: physical reaction, feelings, thoughts and judgements; and action signals. When working with children on emotion management a good place to begin is helping become aware and recognize how their bodies react to various types of emotions. For example, a nervous stomach or tightness in shoulders may occur when they are unsure or stressed out. Talking about physical reactions and how thoughts, feelings, and behavior are connected gives children a sense of more control. Ideally when they begin to notice these sensations they will become mindful and use some of the regulation strategies we teach in counseling (like deep breathing with counting or tighten and release muscles). To read more about the concept of body reactions as part of emotional learning go to social-and-emotional-learning/emotional-development

Props to teach mindfulness and the brain

Mindfulness is an important but very abstract concept for children to grasp. We also try to teach our students that feelings generate from the back of the brain (amygdala and hippocampus) but that thinking occurs in the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex).  If our brain is totally full of feelings (represented by jar full of sand) then there are is no room for thoughts (represented by bag of rocks). The other jar has rocks and sand- our full mind should be a balance of thoughts and feeling. My students, especially those who are referred for self-regulation and emotion-regulation groups really like props. The like to touch the jars and then they color and label a handout that looks like the chart pictured above.Practicing mindfulness calms the amygdala and allows us to access the prefrontal cortex, so that we can make thoughtful choices for how to respond. Mindfulness helps children regain access to executive functions: the intention to pay attention, emotional regulation, body regulation, empathy, self-calm, and communications skills. This site has a great infographic and cute labels for the various parts of the brain to help children understand the different "jobs" of key parts of the brain mindfulness-and-the-brain-how-to-explain-it-to-children/

Literature to Enhance Empathy

This is my favorite book to teach perspective taking in grades 1-5. It is easy for students to identify how each of the characters feel about the same event, a short outing at a park. They can also express how they would feel if they were either of the children in the story. I use this book in my emotional regulation small groups. Other books that are very good to teach these skills are:

Grey - The Pea and the Princess

Lewis - Not Inside This House

Ludwig - The Invisible Boy

Woodson - Each Kindness

Woodson - The Other Side

Teaching Emotional Regulation and Empathy

This is a great resource to help children learn to read facial expressions, build feeling vocabularies, and talk about feelings - all building blocks for emotional regulation and empathy. The photographs are great with 2 of each so you can play memory or concentration Feelings-Educational When the student makes a match you can have them use the emotion in an I sentence to promote expression of emotions. According to Decety and Cowell empathy involves 3 distinct processes: 1) emotional sharing; 2) empathic concern; and 3) perspective taking.  These processes can be taught individually and in groups through literature, modeling, and role-playing. Mindfulness practice has also been shown to help strengthen empathy by first noticing own responses then shifting focus to noticing the responses of others. I have used this resource in both individual counseling and in my small groups for emotional regulation.

Books to Help Children with Anxiety

I recently found these 3 great resources to help my students who struggle with high levels of anxiety. A Small Thing ... but Big explains systematic desensitization in a kid friendly way - the girl overcomes her fear of dogs. Upper elementary students can learn about the same process by reading School of Fear. I always tell parents and children that trying to manage anxiety if like the Wack-a-Mole game at the arcade because you might get separation anxiety under control and then it pops up as social anxiety or a specific fear.  Therefore I think this new release has the perfect cover. I have it on pre-order from Amazon but I am hoping they will have a copy at our state SCA conference this week. Reading about the struggle of others with anxiety helps normalize the experience and teach strategies. I read A Small Thing... but Big to my emotion management group.

You Cue Feelings

I am always looking for good resources to teach children about emotions. We want to them to have good feeling vocabulary so they can understand and label the various levels of basic feelings. We also want children to make the connection between feelings and thoughts.  Dr. Ann Vagin has a good book called "You Cue Feelings", a website socialtime.org, and a You Tube channel. Dr. Vagin likes to use online videos as the stimulus to teach children about feelings. I prefer to use children's literature. The book pictured above "Ready for Anything!" is a great one to use in emotion regulation groups to stimulate discussion of emotions and how different thoughts cause different feelings. For example, one character is nervous about going on a picnic because what if there are bees. The other character wanted to go on a picnic because what if there are butterflies. After reading and discussing pleasant and unpleasant feelings and thoughts and the book, the students identify a comfortable and uncomfortable and the associated thoughts. Dr. Vagin has lists of her favorite videos to teach feelings on her website and in her book.

Feelings Ladders

In order for children to regulate emotions they need to understand that all feelings are okay and there are many nuances to emotions especially the level of intensity. Children need to have a rich emotional vocabulary to label and express feelings. They need to be very aware of  how they are reacting to choose an appropriate strategy to manage the feeling. For anger counselors often use a thermometer but for other feelings like levels of "Afraid" I find a ladder is a better visual for most kids. After we brainstorm and discuss a particular "feeling family" like afraid or unsure they can select and write on a blank ladder handout low, medium, and high feelings in that category they experience. For example:
Anxious, Nervous, Uneasy, Frightened, Panicky, and Terrified. For some students it may be helpful to color the steps that are low green, medium yellow, and high red. Using Feelings Ladders helps students better understand emotions and then you can discuss appropriate coping tools for each level. For example if a student is anxious they may need to use take a movement break, if they are uneasy slow deep breathing, and if they are panicky seek help from an adult or self-talk.  They can write their go to strategy for each level on this handout to help them remember what might work for them. I have used Feelings Ladders both individually and in small groups from grades 2-5. You could also make a blank Feelings Ladder poster and laminate it to reuse.

Feeling Families

I find it helpful to teach students there are 4 basic groups of feelings that have different levels of energy. This is a way of organizing emotions and helping students think about what emotion they are having, to what degree, and select an appropriate coping strategy. These are the same categories used in CBT Mixed Emotions activity that I wrote about previously for upper grade students with good vocabularies playtherapygames/mixed-emotions I used the feeling faces stickers from Conscious Discipline because those or ones I teach in the classroom in kindergarten and grade 1 so my students are familiar with them. This chart can be used to brainstorm additional feelings and they can be added with sticky notes or because it is laminated written on the chart with dry erase markers.

I keep the chart of the 4 families up in my office all the time because I use it frequently in individual and groups counseling sessions. For individual counseling this chart can be used as a check in by adding a scale. I ask (and record to determine patterns and hopefully progress) on a scale of ) to ten with 0=not having that category of emotions at all since our previous session to 10=Having that as strongly as I can remember having that category of emotions. So a client might be at 6/10 for happy and clam; 5/10 for anxious unsure feelings; 7/10 for angry frustrated; 4/10 for sad or left out. I then ask the student to tell me what happened that made them give that family each number.

For groups I am showing you some things I do reinforce and use feeling families with my self-regulation groups (where we work on controlling our bodies first, then our emotions, and finally our thoughts). For my emotion regulation groups, depending on the grade level, I do the activity sheets above. I make a word bank with a variety of grade level appropriate emotions and they write them in the correct house. This can be easily extended to reinforce I messages by having a member pick a feeling from the house and use it in an I message. These activity sheets go home so parents know what students are learning in group.

Using the Feelings Families has helped my students recognize, understand, label, and express their emotions with more clarity. It helps me tailor a discussion of coping tools that are sometimes effective dealing with each of the 3 unpleasant families of emotions. For example, take a break or walk away is a go strategy for anger but not for anxiety or sadness.

Games for the Counseling Office

If you are still purchasing materials for your counseling office for next year and you don't have one of these bingo games. I have the entire set but if you can only afford one (they are $25) buy Empathy Counts childtherapytoys.com/products/empath You can play the game like regular bingo and have the students answer the question card that goes with the number on the tile they played. The Empathy Counts game offers and option to build a happy face or the letter E for empathy with the tiles which makes the game go faster and the students really like it. My students know a big part of my job is for them to understand their own feelings, understand the feelings of others, and act with compassion when another person is having unpleasant feelings. These games help facilitate this type of social emotional learning.

Books for Counseling

Stephanie Jensen (author) and Dr. Poppy Moon (illustrator) have teamed up with youthlight.com to make these engaging books that you will want on your bookshelf. Bully-bee encourages a friendly attitude, Beezilla teaches acceptance and belonging, and Mood Ring Rainbow shows the importance of self-awareness and self-management. I use them in small groups with first and second graders but the books are large enough that they could be used in classroom lessons.

Individual Counseling Tool

My students love to play Totika but I don't usually use the card decks that the publisher makes because their questions narrow the focus. I have made category cards with broad topics that allows the student to share what they want. I select cards based on the reason I am seeing the child. For example, if the child's parent have just separated I will select the card with the category family. When the student pulls that color log they are invited to share something true or a belief they have about their family. Using categories also takes away the problem of reading because even first graders can use initial letter clues and quickly remember 1-2 word categories. I always have question as one category so I can ask what I want to know. When the student selects the question color log it is interesting what they ask me. I have learned a lot about students I see in counseling playing this open ended version of Totika.

My Many Colored Days Bulletin Board

For Dr. Seuss' birthday March 2 I frequently turn My Many Colored Days into a bulletin board or door decoration. The books associates moods and emotions with colors and animals which is depicted on the display. This year we added the animals because I found the outlines on line at many_colored_days The outlines are the last few pages of this pdf. If you look at the Bulletin Board page you can see how we used this in the past along with our Empathy theme in November.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

I am sure all elementary counselors use some of the many books Dr. Seuss wrote. The ones I use on a regular basis are: Horton Hears a Who!, The Lorax, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, The Sneetches, and The Zax. 
My Many Colored Days is my favorite by Dr. Seuss because it is useful in expanding students understanding of a variety of emotions. Being able to name or label emotions is key to self-regulation. To learn more about this read labeling-feelings-is-so-important
The book can be used for a variety of lessons or group sessions on feelings and there are many activities to choose from including those described here my-many-colored-days or many_colored_days

Appreciating Happy Experiences

The MindUp Curriculum from the Hawn Foundation teaches the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits of reliving happy experiences fully and mindfully. Remembering a happy memory releases the "feel-good" chemicals in our brain that flooded it at the time of the actual experience. When teaching that appreciating happy memories can help overcome sadness and insecurity, I use the delightful children's book Harry the Happy Mouse (2015) by n.g.k. Harry helps a Frog, but asks the Frog to repay the kindness to someone else. The book follows the good deed as it moves through other characters, who each selflessly help someone else, making themselves feel happy in the process! There are coloring and games that go with the book at harrythehappymouse that I have used with English Language Learners. But for my tier 2 first grade group my activity sheet for this session comes comes from a resource I have used for close to 10 years from MARCO colorful-counseling-with-cd/ by R. Sheritz Sartori & R. Hood Herrman. The Happy Memories sheet is from the Loss section of this worthwhile resource. My first graders in my Emotion Regulation group which we call "All Feelings are OK" enjoyed writing, drawing, and sharing 3 happy memories. They were visibly happier when they left the counseling office than when we began group!

The WorryWoo series helps children in grades 1-3 understand emotions and how to cope with them. Andi Green created the charming WorryWoo monsters and has a web site with free lesson plans worrywoos.com/ I use the books in small tier 2 groups aimed at emotional and self regulation. The students love them! My favorite is Don't Feed the Worry Bug so I was excited to find that Green had teamed up with Dr. John to offer advice to parents on how to help children manage feelings.

I first purchased Helping Young Worriers Beat the WorryBug: A Practical and Fun-filled Guide of Therapeutic Ideas and Activities, a practical, 41 page guide designed to support anyone interested in helping children thrive emotionally. Written by Australian Child-psychologist Dr. John Irvine and illustrated by Andi Green, this guide helps children and their parents evaluate, understand and beat the WorryBug. This booklet focuses on anxiety which is the top referral reason at my school. The first part explains anxiety, then Dr. John explains how mindfulness and thought beating coupled with games and activities can reduce the WorryBug with positive and engaging strategies for children. It contains lots of great ideas to suggest to parents of the children in my groups. He has a very helpful "Corner" on the WorryWoos web page like this one on "The Amygdala HiJack" amygdala-hi-jack He has  written booklets to accompany each of the WorryWoo books.

Blocks with Clear Plastic Sleeves

I have bought and made cubes to use in groups for a variety of topics and issues over the year. I have feeling cubes and story cubes. I just got these 4 inch square cubes each have 6 clear plastic sleeves (from Amazon). These are so flexible I might use them in every group I lead. They could also be used in a classroom lesson as a hook for review or with individuals to get student talking. You just have to make 3-1/2 inch square cards to slip in the sleeves. There are activities you can use just one cube, two, three, or all four. This week I am using 2 of them (at a time) in a group with 3 students who are recent arrivals to the country. I am doing a version of an activity I do in kindergarten on the Smartboard. One cube will have pictures and labels of 6 animals (dog, bird, monkey, cow, bear, horse) and the other 6 feelings. The member roles both cubes and acts out whatever lands on top (like sad cat). These cubes are perfect to make tailored ice breakers like for a social skills group e.g., ask an open question about an activity, interest, entertainment, school, sports, and book or movie. They could be used in a new student or friendship group with just some basic get to know you questions. They could be used in a final session of a Study Skills group for a review session - give your best advice about homework, studying for tests, taking notes, group work, memorizing, and attention. Since I do all my groups in grades 3-5 these cubes have the advantage of being easy to wipe down in case they get food or germs on them.