Thinking resilient: activities for wellbeing

Activities to help children and young people with their emotions

We’ve pulled out some handy activities from our Think Resilient peer education resource, which will help children and young people with their feelings.

These activities explore resilience – they’re all about building skills and resources to deal with the challenges in life.

Download these activities and use them to talk to young people about how they can develop their resilience and wellbeing during tough times.

They're written for different age groups, from Brownies (age 7-10) and upwards. If you have children of Rainbow age (4-7) you might find they can be useful as well.

They were originally planned for groups in unit meetings, so they might need to be adapted a little bit if you’re doing them one to one or in an online group.

Positive thinking and problem solving

What can I control? Recommended for age 7+

Look at what we can control, and what positive steps we can take, even when there are other things outside our control. You can do this as written in the book or using pens and paper. It’s written for a group, so you could do it as a family or one-to-one with your child.

Download what can I control? activity

Some specific examples to use in this activity could be:

Cannot control: The fact I can’t see Grandma and Grandad.
Can control: Video call them! Or give them a phone call – they’d love it!
Cannot control: I’m worried that someone I know or love might get ill.
Can control: We can’t stop this happening, but we can make sure we do our bit to protect everyone by washing our hands, staying inside when we’re ill and staying at home as much as possible for now.
Cannot control: Everyone is worrying about coronavirus and I’m scared.
Can control: We can talk to our parents about why they’re worried and how it’s making us feel.

Self-calming

Meditation and mindfulness are two examples of things we can use to comfort ourselves. It’s best to repeat these activities every day for 5-10 minutes so everyone gets used to using these techniques.

Breathing techniques

Practice breathing out for longer than you breathe in. This can help you calm down when feeling overwhelmed. Best to test this one out yourself first, because you need to make sure that whatever they’re breathing out can float in the air.

Download the breathing techniques activity

Directed meditation

Go through a set meditation to feel calmer. This activity can be brilliant to do together at the end of the day.

Download the directed meditation activity

Identify support networks

Building support networks

A simple activity where you draw out a map of all the people who are there for you. For younger girls, try drawing around their hand and making every finger someone else who can help and support them.

Download the building support networks activity

Recognise strengths and achievements

Positive spinning

Do this activity as a whole family and use the time to celebrate how wonderful you all are. It might mean clearing space in a room, as it’s quite energetic and fun. Not one to do just before bed!

Download the positive spinning activity

These activities were developed in 2016 with YoungMinds , who also have some great resources for anxiety around coronavirus.

If you'd like to find out more about peer education at Girlguiding, take a look at how it works. You might want to invite a peer educator to your unit meeting once in-person meetings start up again.

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