Ask students to raise their hand if they have ever had a bad day, or a day when they felt like things just kept getting worse and worse and nothing went right. Then ask students if they have ever heard of stress or can explain in their own words what stress means. After taking a few student responses, explain that stress is when a person feels worried about things in their life or is uncomfortable with a situation. Tell students that stress and worry are emotions that can have both physical and mental effects on a person. A physical effect is when a person’s body feels sick or bad, and a mental effect is when a person feels sad or upset in their mind.

Ask students to stand up and to follow your instructions carefully. Instruct students to breathe slowly in through their noses and out through their mouths. Demonstrate this technique dramatically to students so they can see how you take time with each breath and are intentional in how you breathe. Do this five times as a class. Tell students they did great and that you want to do one more activity with them standing next to their seat. Tell students to make their bodies very rigid and tight, as if their whole body is one big, straight board. Demonstrate. After the class holds this position for a few moments, instruct students to make their bodies very loose, like wet noodles. Demonstrate by loosening your body and wiggling all around, letting your arms jiggle. Tell students to make their bodies tight again, and loosen and jiggle. Do this a few times. After this is complete, ask students to return to their seats.

Ask students how they feel after this breathing and body movement activity. One or two students should suggest that they feel relaxed, but if they do not, prompt the class toward this response. Explain to the class that those two body activities are examples of ways to cope with our emotions, calm down, and relax.

Say to students, “It is important to manage and handle the stress in your life. In order to do this, we must examine the things that cause stress to see if there are healthy ways to handle them. We are going to create a list of skills and strategies that can help all of us cope with the things that cause stress in our lives.”

Ask for volunteers to give an example of something that worries them or might cause stress in their lives. As students give examples of stressors, write them on the board or on chart paper. Next to the list of stressors the students suggested, create a new list on the board of stress relievers and coping skills. Ask students to help think of ideas. If students have trouble, suggest the following:

1. Play outside or exercise
2. Stretch
3. Read a book
4. Doodle/draw/start an art project
5. Talk to someone about how you feel
6. Practice slow-breathing techniques (like the one you led in “I Do”)
7. Practice body-relaxing techniques (like the one you led in “I Do”)
8. Play music and dance
9. Think about things that make you happy
10. Spend time with a pet
11. Take a nap
12. Take a bath or shower
13. Count backward from 10 slowly
14. Journal or write down your feelings
15. Close your eyes and visualize a safe, calm place

Explain that sometimes people may need to use more than one strategy to help them, or sometimes a strategy that works for one person will not work for another. Also, explain that a person might still feel stress even after using the strategy, but it might not be as strong as it was before. Stress how important it is that people learn strategies that help when dealing with these emotions.

Guide the students through creating a “Coping with Emotions” book. Pass out three pieces of paper to each student and have them fold the pages into a book. Tell the students that they will pick an emotion for each page in the book and write the name of the emotion at the top of the page. Underneath the emotion, the students will write the strategies they use to cope with this emotion. Walk the students through the activity by having them all do the same emotion for the first page. Have the students write “anger” at the top of the first page in their book and then, as a class, discuss strategies they could use to help them cope with this emotion. Direct students to write down the strategies they discussed. (They do not need to be exactly the same.) Stress the importance of using communication as a strategy to help them cope with the emotion of anger.

Have the students complete a few more pages in the book independently or in small groups. Encourage the students to pick emotions they feel that they experience often and for which they may need better strategies to help them cope. Walk around the room and monitor the students as they are working. Let students use their coloring supplies to create art and designs in their books.

After the students have been given enough time to complete their books, allow students to share an emotion they experience and the strategies they identified to help cope with this emotion. After a few students have shared, recap the lesson by stressing the importance of communicating how one is feeling.