School Mental Health Ontario has released a series of 12 mental health activities designed for students and parents to try at home. The activities are connected to the six areas of social-emotional learning.
Managing stress will help children cope with stressful situations. Too much stress can act like temper tantrums, stomach aches, worry and irritability. Some activities that can help include:
- Deep belly breathing
- Snowstorm in a bag
Identifying emotions is key, as children sometimes are unsure of what emotion they are experiencing. These activities can help your child to learn, identify, and express their emotions:
- Emotion charades
- What’s the temperature
Stay positive by teaching your child about how optimism helps everyone. These activities focus on seeing the good in situations:
- Gratitude moment
- Four finger affirmation
Nurturing relationships helps children work on skills like kindness and being positive. These activities help build healthy relationships:
- Kindness jar
- Notice the positive
Children need to know they matter. These activities focus on helping children express themselves.
- Show and share
- Inspirational graffiti
You can’t avoid problems in life but you can plan and problem solve for them. These activities can help with problem solving:
- Organizing pause
- Stop, think and go problem solving
The link to check out all the activities can be found here.
