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The world can sometimes feel overwhelming—not just for adults, but especially for children. Whether it’s a natural disaster on the news, a loss in the family, or big changes at home, kids rely on the adults around them to help make sense of life’s hardest moments.
Talking about these experiences isn’t always easy, but when we hold space for honest, age-appropriate conversations, we give children a chance to feel heard, grounded, and supported.
At Soul Shoppe, we believe every moment is an opportunity for connection. This includes the tough ones. In this article, we’ll share gentle, SEL-informed guidance for how to talk to your child about difficult topics, from natural disasters to grief and beyond.
Why These Conversations Matter
When children face uncertainty or distress and don’t have the language or support to process it, their emotions can build up and show up in unexpected ways, like outbursts, anxiety, or withdrawal.
They may not ask directly, but they are listening. They’re watching how we react and what we say (or don’t say). By being present and honest in a developmentally appropriate way, we model emotional resilience and invite children into safe, supportive conversations.
A Gentle List of Tough Topics to Talk About
Below are some hard topics to talk about that children may experience or hear about in school, at home, or through the media.
Each of these can prompt big feelings, confusion, and questions, especially when they’re unexpected.
How to Talk to a Child About Difficult Topics
Let’s walk through a few ways to open up these conversations with care and connection.
1. Start with a Check-In
Before diving into any tough topic, create space to see how your child is already feeling. You might say:
“Have you heard anything about what happened today?”
“How are you feeling about everything?”
“I noticed you’ve been quiet lately—want to talk?”
Children may not always have the words, but asking opens the door for connection.
2. Keep Language Clear, Honest, and Age-Appropriate
You don’t have to explain everything, but children do need clarity. Speak truthfully, using simple language that matches their developmental stage.
Example:
For a natural disaster: “There was a big storm in the city next to us. People are helping to keep everyone safe.”
For death: “That means their body stopped working, and they won’t come back. It’s okay to feel sad.”
Avoid overcomplicating or minimizing. Honesty, even in small doses, builds trust.
3. Reassure, Without Overpromising
Children want to know: Am I safe? Are the people I love safe?
Offer comfort with facts: “We’re safe right now.”
Remind them of the helpers: “There are so many people working to help others.” And let them know it’s okay to have big feelings: “It’s normal to feel scared or sad about this.”
4. Let Emotions Have Space
Tears, silence, anger—these are all natural responses to stress or grief. Rather than rushing to “fix” the feeling, be a calm presence beside it.
“It’s okay to cry. I’m here with you.”
“You don’t have to talk right now. Just know I’m here when you’re ready.”
When navigating children and grief, know that it doesn’t follow a straight line. Some days will be heavy, others lighter. Keep the door open for ongoing conversations.
Examples of Difficult Topics in Real Life—and How to Talk Through Them
Here are a few real-world scenarios with sample language you can adapt:
A Natural Disaster on the News
“Something big happened, and lots of people are working hard to help. It might feel scary, but we’re safe here. Would you like to talk more about it or ask questions?”
When a Pet or Family Member Dies
“[Name] died, and that means we won’t see them again. It’s okay to feel sad or miss them. I miss them too. Want to remember a favorite story together?”
Divorce or Separation
“Things are changing, but what stays the same is how much we both love you. You’re not alone in this—we’ll go through it together.”
These conversations are hard, but they’re also deeply healing.
How Social Emotional Learning Supports Tough Conversations
SEL gives children the tools to name their emotions, regulate their bodies, and connect with empathy—skills that are essential during times of stress or change.
Whether it’s learning to breathe through strong emotions, practicing kindness, or navigating peer conflict, SEL makes space for the kind of emotional growth that supports kids during life’s hardest moments.
Helpful Tips for Grown-Ups Navigating These Topics
Be okay with not having all the answers. Saying, “I don’t know, but we can find out together,” is powerful.
Limit overexposure to media. Curate age-appropriate news and take breaks when needed.
Use art, storytelling, or play to help kids express themselves.
Model emotional regulation. Let them see you take deep breaths, pause, or ask for help.
Check in later. Conversations around childhood stress or grief are ongoing—don’t make it a one-time event.
You Don’t Have to Do It Alone
If a child is dealing with grief, fear, or ongoing distress, it’s okay to seek support.
Speak with school counselors
Share grief resources for students
Reach out to community programs and educators trained in SEL
Even small steps—like a breathing exercise or a reassuring word—can mean everything to a child.
Be the Safe Place
Learning how to talk to your child about difficult topics isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about being the steady, supportive presence children can trust.
By meeting kids with honesty, empathy, and calmness, you show them that even when the world feels big or uncertain, they are not alone.
A key aspect to understand in social and emotional learning is the importance of managing emotions. Incorporating ways to manage emotions in a classroom setting can help teach children skills necessary to live rewarding lives. If children can get an education that teaches them how to deal with emotions in a healthy way, they are more likely to thrive.
Managing emotions in a positive way has far-reaching benefits. Not only will a kid with the ability to self-regulate their feelings experience better social interactions, but there are also health benefits to effective emotional management. People who know how to manage their emotions in a positive way will have better cardiovascular health. (HHP) Good emotional health quite literally gives people good hearts.
While there are many techniques that might prove effective for positive emotional management, we have a favorite. The Empty Balloon is an exercise we often implement here at Soul Shoppe.
The Empty Balloon Exercise — How it Works
The Empty Balloon Exercise is an emotional management tool. It begins by having students visualize emotional states as big balloons. As the emotion expands, the imagined balloon expands. And what happens to balloons when they overinflate?
They pop.
In an effort to avoid emotional explosions, the idea is to find ways to release pressure from your emotional ballon before they pop.
Improving Emotional Intelligence for Elementary Students
Emotional intelligence is a critical factor in the effective management of emotions. The practice of improving emotional intelligence is a lifelong challenge for most of us. It’s valuable to prepare children with a solid foundation in understanding how to interpret and manage emotions. This includes their own and those of other people.
In order to improve emotional intelligence, teachers and parents can incorporate certain activities into their curricula. Such as: (DCE)
Self-awareness activities. Activities like journaling and role-playing help children learn self-awareness. Reading is also a good tool for learning self-awareness.
Practicing self-regulation. Exercises like pausing to breathe before reacting and recognizing your own emotions are important. Board games and active games like Simon Says help kids learn and practice self-regulation skills.
Empathy is an important part of improving emotional management. It may not come naturally for children to think about how other kids feel. Activities like check-ins including the whole class, or role-playing help students practice empathy.
Cultivating social skills. Nothing teaches emotional intelligence better than social interaction. Providing children with opportunities to practice social skills gives them practical experience in developing emotional awareness. Team sports and playing games as teams provide good aids in teaching social skills.
A lot goes into emotional intelligence. With a strong grounding in emotional awareness, students can learn lessons to help them manage and control their emotions in healthy ways. (HBS)
Sometimes children find it challenging to differentiate between feelings and emotions. It is important to develop the skills to identify when it is an emotion and when it is a feeling. Feelings are generally immediate reactions to situations, while emotions often involve a deeper psychological reality. (iMotions)
How to Manage and Control Emotions in Healthy Ways
Emotional balloons will inflate. Being human means having emotions. Developing emotional intelligence is a lifelong skill. When kids can identify what they’re feeling, they will have better luck deflating their emotional balloons.
There are a handful of good ways to deflate your emotional balloon. Here are a few: (SoulShoppe)
Hang out with friends. Social interaction helps raise emotional awareness and helps turn negative emotions into positive ones.
Dance it out. Engaging the body with an activity unrelated to a negative emotion helps reduce the pressure in your emotional balloon. Plus…
Listening to music is always a good emotional outlet!
Stop and breathe for a second before doing the next thing.
Read a book. If the problem is getting too deep into your own head, books are great ways to change how you’re thinking.
Give someone a hug. As naturally social animals, humans heal from positive physical contact.
Find a chuckle. Laughing stimulates endorphin production and helps with mood regulation.
Do something creative. Drawing a picture, singing a song, and writing some poetry, are all ways to redirect emotional energy in a positive way.
Talking to someone trustworthy will also help relieve emotional stress a lot of the time.
Cry if you need to!
There are a lot of ways to relieve pressure from your emotional balloon, or even empty it completely.
Peace Corner
Where can students go during the school day when they need a moment to empty their emotional balloons? A peace corner is a safe space that can be created in the classroom or at home where children can empty their emotional balloons. Find out how to create a peace corner here.
There are many opportunities for children to learn how to manage emotions in a positive way, at home and at school. Through creating and sharing social and emotional learning techniques, Soul Shoppe helps teachers and parents at home or in the classroom. Our SEL curriculum for elementary school students help children learn positive emotional management. We have developed tools like the Empty Emotional Balloon exercise and the Peace Corner to bring SEL tools to your curriculum. To learn about online SEL programs for elementary schools, click here. For home school social emotional programs, click here.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions can be a challenge for both children and adults. To our lower brains, voluntarily taking responsibility for actions feels like attracting consequences on purpose. It isn’t necessarily a natural instinct. On the other hand, higher executive functions tell us something different. Those functions help people live successful lives as contributing members of their communities. (DevelopingChild) Therefore, developing strength of character, to make taking responsibility for their actions a habit, helps children grow into strong community members. But how do we teach a child to take responsibility for their actions at home or at school? Let’s explore.
How To Teach a Child to Take Responsibility for Their Actions
Modeling
Taking responsibility for actions as well as approaching tasks responsibly requires the development of higher executive functions. Functions like working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. (DevelopingChild)
In a classroom setting as well as in the home, the most effective teaching method for higher executive functions is modeling them. (MCC)
It’s important for teachers and parents to develop caring relationships with their children.
Adults should make an effort to be strong and healthy role models. Children see everything and they’re always learning.
It should be made clear by parents and teachers that caring matters.
Additionally, children need to be given opportunities to practice caring. This might include volunteering opportunities or other activities that teach responsibility.
Expose children to a wider understanding of the cares of the world, within reason, to help them to build empathy.
Modeling healthy behavior will teach children higher executive functions, such as taking responsibility for their actions. Educators and parents can reinforce the lessons through activities and games that teach responsibility.
Role-playing helps to teach children about outcomes of scenarios that haven’t occurred yet. Set up a scenario where the person in the scenario did something that affected others negatively. Prompt the child to take responsibility for their actions, and then demonstrate a positive outcome. Praise the child in the scenario. You might say something like, “Sometimes it can be hard to tell the truth. I’m so glad you were honest and told me about what happened. Let’s work together to fix the situation.”
Tidying up their Workspace
Nobody likes cleaning up the workspace at the end of the day. Right?
What if it’s turned into a game? Maybe at the end of the day, turn tidying up the classroom into a game. Perhaps race to see who can clean up their space first.
It’s possible to reframe tidying up as a positive and rewarding activity. It can easily become an effective technique for teaching responsibility to students.
Help in the Kitchen
Kids can learn a lot about responsibility from cooking. Kitchens are full of tools that have to be used responsibly in order to be useful and not dangerous. Cooking requires attention to detail and effective planning. It also comes with an automatic reward for doing it right in the form of a cake, or a batch of cookies, or a meal.
Because most recipes also come with several jobs and tools, parents or educators can assign responsibilities to different children. One kid can be in charge of the recipe. Another kid might be responsible for the measuring cups or measuring spoons. There might be a child entirely in charge of setting and watching timers.
Kitchens come ready-made with tools that teach responsibility.
Reorganize the Workspace
Maybe a classroom, a playroom, or a reading area isn’t the most sensible layout and has the potential for restructuring. Children can learn a lot about taking responsibility for their own space if the following question is raised: “How would you reorganize this space?”
Students can learn higher cognitive skills from an exercise involving reorganizing their classroom or workspace. They will need to practice planning in order to think about making changes to the current layout. Reorganizing might involve negotiation and compromise if one kid has one idea and another kid has a different idea.
The end result will be rewarding to all children involved. They get to feel like they were responsible for a positive change in their environment.
Animal Care
If there is a class pet or animal at home, then caring for the animal will help teach responsibility. Children will have to learn how to make adjustments in their schedules to take care of the animal. There are also lessons in remembering to keep to a schedule. Caring for an animal comes with a sense of responsibility since a child’s actions affect the well-being of another living thing. Children can also learn community interaction skills if the whole class bears responsibility for the class pet.
Corporate Garden
Similar to caring for an animal, planting a garden as a class, or at home, helps children learn how to take responsibility for their actions. This activity requires that they pay attention to the care and needs of the plants, attending to the everyday requirements of weeding and watering. Children will need to think about how the weather might affect their garden. They might have to take responsibility for creating shelter for the plants or checking the soil. Gardens teach time management skills as well as working memory.
Teaching Responsibility
It’s important to teach a child how to take responsibility for their actions. By using games and activities that teach accountability, teachers and parents can help children develop higher cognitive skills. It is also important to live the lessons being taught. Kids learn by example. If their teachers and parents demonstrate responsible behaviors, children will likely model them too.
Self-control is one of the most important life skills anyone can learn. By providing lessons that nurture self-control skills, parents and teachers can set children up for success later in life. (UsableKnowledge)
Classroom games are a great way to teach self-control as a social and emotional skill. Social and emotional learning skills that contribute to self-control help children succeed in academia and outside the classroom. In this article, we’ll explore the functions of self-control as well as self-control games and activities that apply those functions.
Self-Control Functions
First, it is necessary to understand the functions contributing to self-control. With an understanding of those functions, it’s possible to begin developing games and activities that create learning opportunities for children.
The functions contributing to the development of self-control are: (DevelopingChild)
Working memory. This is when a person knows how to effectively store information in their mind and use it effectively when necessary.
Inhibitory control. This is the ability to pause and reflect on compulsions and impulses. Inhibitory control is mastery over temptations, distractions, and behaviors that might develop into habits.
Cognitive flexibility. Identifying priorities, adjusting perspective, and adapting to the demands of new situations are all under the umbrella of cognitive flexibility. A capacity for this mental resilience is a necessary part of self-control.
Incorporating practices for working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility will be essential in creating self-control activities for students.
It’s a good possibility that parents and teachers already have activities and games in their resources that teach self-control. Many activities and games children find fun are already good teaching opportunities for self-control. They just need a little more context in order to become more effective self-control strategies for students.
Here are some self-control games that teachers and parents can use:
Self-Control Games
Card Games and Board Games
Card games and board games are excellent aids in teaching self-control strategies to students. Rule-based and goal-oriented card games and board games help children to practice using executive functions to achieve goals. At the same time, card games and board games are social. They put children in scenarios where they have to interact with other children to reach their goals. Children are well-served by practicing a habit of approaching problems with an understanding of how behaviors relate to results. (HBS)
For example:
Card games require children to keep track of numbers and rules and exercise their working memory.
Board games need fast decision-making in challenging situations.
Games are built on strategic thinking, where a decision now relates to an abstract event in the future. These are especially valuable because children have to make decisions involving other people’s actions. Children will start to understand how their own choices relate to the decisions of other people.
Complex rule sets. The mere practice of learning and playing within a complex set of rules gives children practice for higher functions.
Implementing these games with a more intentional approach will better teach self-control strategies. When children are playing, compliment how they are being cooperative and following rules. When they are frustrated, praise them when they aren’t having an outburst. This will help encourage them to continue having self-control while playing.
Physical Activities or Games
In addition to indoor activities, parents and teachers can use outdoor activities for teaching children self-control.
Organized sports place children in situations that teach them higher cognitive functions. When children play sports they are regularly practicing the functions of self-control. Remembering rules and habits of play practices working memory. Avoiding cheating and channeling energy practices inhibitory control. Practicing ingenuity and imaginative solutions helps children with cognitive flexibility.
How much self-control children learn from physical activities like organized sports will depend on how those activities are framed for them. Organized sports already have all the teaching elements. They just need to be explained in a social and emotional learning context.
Music, Singing, Dancing, and Other Creative Pursuits
The discipline and emotional engagement of various creative pursuits create a positive learning context for self-control. Pursuing a creative discipline teaches children many higher cognitive functions. (Harvard)
For example:
When children learn a musical instrument, it helps them practice self-monitoring and selective attention. Learning a musical instrument also teaches working memory as they memorize songs and practice using the instrument correctly.
Musical classes can also provide social opportunities for children. Playing in a band or orchestra helps students to practice cognitive flexibility in order to cooperate with the other children.
Dancing provides similar opportunities to practice higher cognitive skills that contribute to self-control strategies for students.
These creative activities, and others, provide students the ability to practice skills that contribute to self-control. Painting, writing, woodworking, sculpture–pretty much every creative activity has an element of disciplined goal-orientedness that helps children practice self-control. Teachers and parents can use all creative endeavors as social and emotional learning tools.
Stop, Breathe, and Think
Sometimes normal games aren’t enough to help students regulate self-control. In moments when students are having an emotional moment, they can be taught how to expel their energy in a positive way. Using the Stop, Breathe, and Think Technique children are taught to realize when their emotional balloons are full and retreat to a designated corner to control themselves. They can use fun breathing exercises like the bees breathing technique that James uses here to release that emotional energy.
Learn about creating a peace corner for your classroom or home here.
Social and emotional learning means everything to us over here at Soul Shoppe. We have developed teaching tools and techniques to help teachers and parents at school and at home. With tools like our Stop and Breathe Technique and our peace corner, we give educators everywhere the resources they need to help students with social-emotional learning. Click for information on SEL programs for elementary schools or social emotional homeschool electives.
Childhood is an incredibly precious and precarious time in one’s emotional development. According to Rasmussen University, this development process can be characterized by three stages: noticing emotions, expressing emotions, and managing emotions.
The journey of managing the overwhelming emotions of childhood isn’t always an easy one, let alone a straightforward one. In fact, the process can become especially challenging to handle when implementing tools on anger management for kids.
If you want to know how to help your children with anger management, whether inside or outside of the classroom, here’s how you can respond to that anger within a compassionate, empathy-focused framework.
Anger Management for Kids
Anger Management in the Classroom
The classroom is a great source of togetherness and community as children learn alongside their peers and come to form their first friendships—bonds that could potentially last a lifetime. However, typical school stressors, from bullying to challenging work, can also turn the classroom into a source of tension.
Even older children encounter challenges with regulating and controlling their emotions in the classroom. In a study conducted a decade ago, nearly 1 in 12 American adolescents (nearly 6 million people) were found to exhibit traits of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), a condition characterized by uncontrollable, particularly volatile outbursts of anger. (Harvard Medical School)
Anger often stems from intense feelings of being provoked, hurt, or wronged. Since it takes children some time to fully and properly discern the differences between right from wrong, it also takes them some time to formulate proper responses and strategies to cope with feeling wronged.
This is where effective, empathy-focused education plays a crucial role in demonstrating healthy examples of anger management for kids. Even planting a few positive seeds now can prove vital for promoting positive growth long into the future. One great strategy for cultivating these positive seeds could involve teachers facilitating group activities for anger management. Here’s what that would entail.
Group Activities for Anger Management
Group activities and games offer a myriad of insightful, fun opportunities for young students to learn the fundamentals of cooperation. These activities not only help with anger management in the classroom, but healthy emotional management at large.
As an educator, there are a number of creative group activities for anger management you could consider incorporating into your classroom. We hope these suggestions will help spark some inspiration.
Below are some popular group activities for anger management worth some consideration:
Art Therapy: Drawing, painting, sculpting, and sketching all offer ways for children to let their expressive creative abilities flourish, and in turn, creatively visualize their feelings. Art therapy has been shown to effectively work with 68% of children. (Frontiers In Psychology)
Role Play: Acting, charades, and puppet shows are all excellent options for children to externalize their emotions in safe, controlled environments. Rather than yelling or fighting, role-playing offers students a fun, healthy outlet to voice their anger.
Anger Worksheets: Getting kids to express, process, and challenge angry thoughts through creative writing prompts and in-depth worksheets can offer an invaluable resource and means of therapeutic expression. You can find many printable anger management worksheets on the web.
Mindfulness Exercises: Breathing exercises are a remarkably effective lesson to impart on students if you’d like to teach them how to better regulate their emotions. During break time, consider facilitating group meditations or breathing exercises, encouraging students to mindfully reflect on their emotions. Learn the Stop and Breathe technique from Soul Shoppe here.
Board Games: Group-focused board games promote the ideals of collaboration, working together, and hashing out conflict.
Safe Learning Environments: A safe learning environment is a calmer, happier one, where students are encouraged to implement research-backed conflict resolution techniques. You can find conflict resolution activities for kidshere. Additionally, Soul Shoppe provides a peace path to help students learn how to work out their conflict and emotions in a healthy way.
These group activities can provide positive emotional benefits as kids learn to navigate challenging emotions in a safe environment.
But what if all else fails, and little Timmy’s still having trouble controlling his temper? Here are some key steps to keep in mind while trying to manage a child’s anger.
How To Handle An Angry Aggressive Child
Talk Calmly: A parent or authority figure may feel tempted to meet a child’s anger with anger of their own, by yelling back at them. This will likely exacerbate the child’s emotional tension even further. A quiet voice is a great tool to help minimize tension.
Stay Present: While you shouldn’t meet anger with retaliatory yelling, you also shouldn’t capitulate to the child’s anger. Be firm, resolute, composed, and try to teach the child a more peaceful means of conflict resolution after they calm down.
Discipline Appropriately: You can discipline the child with appropriate consequences when they choose bad behavior. However, you should not use overly harsh punishments. Disproportionate punishments will only make the child more angry. Instead, once the child is calm, talk about why they received the punishment they did and how it related to their choices in the given situation. It’s important that they understand cause and effect.
Stay Connected: Connection is extremely important in a child’s life. Help encourage connection through social emotional learning programs. Validate their emotions and teach them how to channel them in a better way.
Anger management and emotional development is a lifelong journey, not only for kids, but well into adulthood. For roughly two decades, Soul Shoppe’s helped thousands of children find their first steps in that journey. We connect with over 60,000 children each year, teaching them new empathy-based approaches to conflict resolution and emotional regulation.
Our SEL programs for elementary schools have yielded proven results in helping teachers and parents teach emotional regulation. Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about our innovative social-emotional learning programs!
Among the highest goals of education is preparing children for rewarding lives and success in whatever field they choose. A large part of that comes from instilling a sense of confidence and faith in their own value. Because confidence is such an important life skill, it’s a good idea to incorporate confidence-building activities for kids into classroom curriculum.
Confidence-Building Activities for Kids
When creating confidence-building activities for kids, the unique personalities within a class will inform the development of the curriculum. At the same time, there are quite a few fundamentally useful thoughts to help you get started.
How to Build Self-Confidence in a Child
Self-confidence comes from several sources. Some learn how to be confident at home, and others from external accomplishments. Additionally, some children develop confidence more easily than others. In a classroom setting, understanding confidence as a teachable skill means approaching it directly, instead of trusting that it will come as a result of other experiences. Techniques indicating how to build self-confidence in a child begin with lessons in self-sufficiency. (Harvard)
For instance, when small children are provided with opportunities to be “big kids,” it shows them how to take responsibility and achieve growth. If children have choices for how they dress or decorate their spaces, or, if they are encouraged to ask questions when shopping or on field trips, then they have the chance to practice forming their own opinions and seeing those opinions rewarded with respect. Ultimately, autonomy and a sense of accomplishment can occur through choices and opportunities. This can lead to confidence.
Another example of this is introducing a chore chart. Chore charts are valuable learning tools from the earliest ages. If children get to participate in the upkeep of their space, especially if that upkeep is part of a community effort, then it gives children the opportunity to understand that their actions affect their environments, and at the same time they can intentionally change their environments. When children understand they can improve their world with purpose, they gain confidence.
You can design activities to boost a child’s sense of self-worth and self-sufficiency. When deciding how to build self-confidence in a child, there are many possible activities that educators can implement.
Classroom Activities to Build Self-Esteem
Designing classroom activities to build self-esteem will depend on the specific needs of the students in the classroom. That being said, there are plenty of fun games to boost self-esteem that an educator can use as a template to begin planning their own classroom activities.
Here are some self-confidence activities for students:
Letter to yourself- In this activity, students will write a letter to themselves. Either to their future self or to their past self. Or, they can write a thank you note to themselves right now. The essence of this activity is to provide children with the tools to look at themselves with an encouraging eye and constructive self-critique.
Gratitude journaling- In this activity, students will make regular entries into a notebook with the sole purpose of appreciating something about themselves or the world around them at a regular interval, such as every day or every week. Part of building a child’s self-esteem includes introducing the habit of believing positive things about themselves. Additionally, when children regularly note positive things around them, it can create a habit of gratitude and positive thinking.
Goals journaling- Accomplishment in all its forms can contribute to confidence. A helpful activity is for students to regularly update a journal in which they write down the goals they would like to achieve in their lives. They should then note what kind of progress they have made in achieving those goals. As a bonus, incorporate a reward system when they achieve their personal goals.
Cooperative board games- A sense of self-worth can come from feeling like you are a valuable member of the community. Children can feel empowered when they can see how their contributions improve their team. Cooperative games can also provide valuable self-reflection opportunities when children work with each other to accomplish common goals.
Achievements collage or journal- When students can see evidence of what they’ve accomplished it can boost their self-confidence. They can create a collage of pictures or drawings. Older students can also create lists. Helping students to get into the habit of seeing the results of their achievements can help their self-confidence improve.
Building confidence is a skill that requires attention and nurturing. Children might not have the benefit of acquiring confidence elsewhere. Therefore, implementing ways to build self-confidence in the classroom gives students an advantage in academics as well as in life. People who are confident generally perform better at tasks, and they thrive in the workforce as they get older. (Chron)
Let’s walk through a few ways to open up these conversations with care and connection.
