Handling the Big Feelings

Week 5 of Connect: Nukko Lake

After a few weeks being away from Connect: Nukko Lake due to illness, we were so happy to be back with the kids for more fun activities this week! This week was a super impactful one because we worked on handling stress and anxiety with the kiddos.

To get back into the swing of things, we started the session off by playing a drawing game with everyone. This was just a way to break the ice with everyone from not being together for awhile.

After the drawing game, we asked the group if they have ever felt stressed or anxious before, and most of the group said they have. We then proceeded to ask the group how they deal with these feelings, and almost the entire group said they just ignore it and it goes away. We see this all too much in our littles, and we feel that it is so important to teach kids the importance of handling these big feelings in a healthy and positive way. Therefore, we then gave the kids some tools to help them work through those feelings instead of ignoring them. Some of the tools we suggested was box breathing, going for a little walk, counting to 10, or talking to someone about how they feel.

After our group chat, we then had the kids make stress balls from water beads and balloons! The kids really liked this activity and asked if they could make two of them! The kids were most excited that they would be allowed to use the stress balls that they just made in class when they were feeling stressed out or anxious. The group then had 10 minutes left so we let them have a snack and play some basketball, ping pong and air hockey!

Overall the group went very well and the kids seemed to have fun!

-Jaidyn, BigsNBC Mentoring Coordinator