Students investigate how emotions help people understand themselves and others, influence choices, change over time, and can be named, expressed, and managed. Using picture clues from A Little Spot of Emotions, selected Inside Out clips, and guided drama, they identify feeling words and communicate emotions through facial expressions, movement, gestures, and personal connections. With support from the school counselor and psychologist, students practice coping tools, reflect after activities, give peer feedback, and revise individual toolkit displays and a class calm-down wall. They demonstrate learning through small-group role-plays and present healthy emotional responses at the Kind Hearts and Feelings Showcase for classmates, families, and community partners.

Students will identify and name common emotions using words, pictures, and face, body, and action clues from stories, drama, and media. Students will use movement and gestures to portray emotions and compare their own feelings and choices with those of characters. Students will match changing emotions with healthy calm-down tools, explain how those tools help, and listen and respond to others with empathy. Students will use feedback and reflection to revise an emotions toolkit and collaborate on a class calm-down wall for the Kind Hearts and Feelings Showcase.

Students will create emotion cards that name feelings and show face, body, and action clues from the book, film clips, and guided drama. They will develop and revise an individual “emotions toolkit” display with drawings or objects showing an emotion, a matching calm-down tool practiced with the counselor or psychologist, and a sentence about personal growth. As a class, students will combine emotion and coping-tool cards into a calm-down wall, using feedback from activity reflections to improve their work. For the Kind Hearts and Feelings Showcase, small groups will present their displays and role-play identifying an emotion, choosing a healthy coping strategy, and explaining how it helps.

Begin an “Emotion Safari” by revealing picture clues from A Little Spot of Emotions and brief Inside Out clips, then invite students to name and sort emotions by face, body, and action clues. In small groups, students use movement and gestures to act out a feeling while classmates identify it, connect it to a personal experience, and suggest a matching calm-down tool. The school counselor and psychologist model calm-down strategies and help launch a class wall where students pair emotion cards with tool cards. Close by introducing the project’s four essential questions and inviting each student to share one feeling noticed, one tool tried, and one question to guide the emotions toolkit they will build and revise.

Host a Kind Hearts and Feelings Showcase for classmates, families, the school counselor, and the school psychologist. Students present their emotions toolkit displays, explaining an emotion, its face, body, and action clues, a matching calm-down tool, and a sentence about personal growth. In small groups, students role-play an emotional situation, identify the feeling, choose a healthy response, and explain how the coping tool helps. Guests explore the class calm-down wall and leave picture or spoken feedback celebrating a helpful strategy they learned.