Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS)

Friendology in Year 2 ♡

This week in Friendology, we’ve been learning all about recognising and managing our big emotions.. Just like keeping a balloon from popping!

We’ve talked about how emotions like anger, frustration, excitement, or sadness can start small but grow bigger if we don’t notice them early. Just as we need to be careful not to overfill a balloon, we need to recognise when our feelings start to “fill up” and use strategies to help us stay calm and in control.

Our students have been practising a few key skills to help with this:

• Noticing when a big feeling is starting to build up.
• Naming the feeling (“I’m feeling angry,” “I’m feeling disappointed,” “I’m really excited”).
• Using calming strategies such as deep breathing, counting to ten, taking a short break, or talking to a trusted adult.
• Understanding body clues. Please encourage students to notice signs like a fast heartbeat, tense muscles, or butterflies in the tummy that signal a big feeling is coming.

• Calming down before we ‘pop’. Showing self-control and choosing helpful ways to manage emotions.

   

Students explored the concept of different emotions and how these can be experienced as either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. They discussed the idea of emotions being like colours and reflected on what those colours might represent to them. As part of the lesson, students completed an activity to identify how they were feeling and chose a colour that best matched their emotions.

Please see below for some amazing work, completed by our Year 2 students: