COVID-19 PACKAGE - Emotions • Tell me how you feel

This activity is a part of the COVID-19 package. The package aims to give youth workers the tools to discuss the consequences of the pandemic with their target group. The COVID-19 overview panel is the starting point for all the discussions. After playing the overview panel, extra activities on the seven different topics are available to dive deeper into the matter. 

On this panel you see four basic emotions. The emotions are (from the top left corner, moving clockwise):

1. Anger
2. Sadness
3. Joy
4. Fear

A pandemic undoubtedly has short-term and long-term effects on children's wellbeing. However, the best way to help kids cope with crisis is to teach them to recognize, understand and manage their emotions. Therefore, these activities about expressing emotions are crucial. They can help the kids to alleviate emotional stress, improve concentration, boost their immune system and enhance brain development.

• Link the panel to the 'Pandemic Response Overview Panel' and ask the children how different characters feel on the panel. What is the reason for their positive or negative emotion?
• Discussion: ask the kids how they felt during the pandemic? What was the most dominant emotion? Why? How do you feel now? What are the things that can change your emotion?
• Empathy activity: ask the children what they did to make someone feel happy, sad, afraid, angry ...
• Grab the bottle: make four bottles in four different colors and place them somewhere in the area. Link every bottle to one of the emotions (if possible, you can use the colors of the emotions on the panel). Share a situation with the group. The players now have to run towards one of the bottles. The first player to grab a bottle, explains why he/she would feel lik this in this situation. If it's a good explanation, the player gets one point and the game continues with a new statement.

• Learn how to express emotions and share them with a group