To be able to describe different emotions. To know that it is normal to feel a range of emotions. Feelings Forecast Activity Sheet – one per child or one between two. Play the game ‘In the manner of the word’: Display the list of emotion adverbs on the board:

Happily, sadly, proudly, confidently, shyly, excitedly, angrily, sorrowfully, gratefully, calmly, nervously, inquisitively, anxiously.

Downloads:

• Lesson plan Understanding our emotions
• PowerPoint Weather emotions
• Emotions Match Up Cards
• Feelings Forecas

Ask for a volunteer who is feeling confident today. Tell them to choose a word from the list and keep it to themselves. Remove the list from the board. Give the volunteer an activity e.g. reading a book. The volunteer has to mime doing this activity ‘in the manner of the word’ (so, if their adverb is ‘angrily’ they have to mime reading a book angrily!) Ask the rest of the class to give more examples of activities

e.g. playing football/eating lunch/waving to a friend. The volunteer continues to mime each activity in the manner of the word until somebody guesses their adverb. The guesser then has a go at miming. At the end of the activity, ask the children what all the adverbs have in common? (They all describe emotions.)

• To make this activity more challenging, don’t display the adverbs on the board, put them in a hat and ask the volunteer to pick one.

INTRODUCTION

Or/

A simpler version is the game ‘Emotions charades’:

Show a selection of different emotions words on the board e.g. happy, sad, confused, worried,cross, shocked, curious, calm, scared, nervous, shy, excited, bored, lonely, proud, grateful. Ask avolunteer to choose an emotion and mime it with their face and body. The class have to guess the emotion.

Explain that the game we just played showed us how different emotions might look to other people. In today’s lesson we are going to be thinking about how different emotions feel inside.

It can be difficult to find the words to describe how we feel inside so we’re going to use the weather to help us. Show children the slide with symbols for different weather conditions. Let’s try an example together – joy. What weather do you think would best describe how joy feels? Would joy be dull grey clouds or fog? As the children share

ACTIVITY

Introduce the  Feelings Forecast Activity Sheet and check that the children understand the different emotions – can they think of a time they’ve felt each one? Display the slide with photos of different weather conditions and key weather words to give ideas. Children complete the sheet by drawing and describing the weather they think best describes each emotion. (Differentiate the length of description required according to age and ability.)Encourage them to think about how the emotions feel inside rather than just how they look. You might like to have the children working in pairs to encourage discussion.

Explain that the weather changes all the time - sometimes it’s heavy rain and sometimes it’s warm sun. Our emotions are the same - they come and they go. We can feel lots of different emotions in one day.

It can be helpful to check in with ourselves every so often to see how we are feeling. This helps us to understand our feelings and to make choices about what to do.

Ask: What can you do when feeling a difficult emotion? Collect ideas on the board. Examples might include talk to an adult, talk to a friend, exercise, listen to music, take some deep breaths, write in a journal, do a mindfulness or relaxation activity, do something creative like colouring, be kind to someone else (when we are kind to other people it can help us to feel happier too).

To finish, you might like to practise doing a guided relaxation together:

Waterfall relaxation

Close your eyes and place your hands in your lap. Take three gentle, slow breaths. Now, imagine beautiful white light flowing gently over you, like a waterfall of light. It feels light and warm and soft. As it flows over you, you feel your body become soft and relaxed. First, feel your face relaxing – feel your forehead become smooth, your eyelids relax and your cheeks soften. Feel your jaw loosen and even your tongue feel a little bit softer in your mouth. As the light flows over your neck feel any tightness in your neck ease, let your shoulders relax, maybe let them drop a little. Keeping your back fairly straight, imagine the waterfall of warm light flowing over your body, over the tops of