|
Activities for Classroom and Home Use
Although the activities below have been divided into distinct sections for teachers and parents, you should feel free to adapt them for different age groups and settings. We hope you’ll be inspired to come up with your own activities that encourage students to think about smiles and positive feelings in a wider context—and how they can spread more of them.
Classroom Activities for Teachers:
The Story Behind the Smile
Collect enough postcards or printed images (magazines and so forth) of people smiling (these can include works of art, mythological figures, etc.) Pass one image out to each student, and ask everyone to write a short piece from the point of view of the person/creature in the image about what is making him happy—the story behind the smile. It can be a narrative, a poem or any form the student chooses. Collect the images, shuffle them, and hand them out, making sure that no one gets their original image. Everyone takes turns reading aloud their description. Whoever has the image that he/she thinks corresponds to the description holds it up; students take turns reading until all the images have been guessed.
Ask students if they would have written their descriptions differently based on what other students guessed. What have they learned from this exercise?
Happy…Or Not?
Smiles generally convey happiness—but not always. Try the activities below to get students thinking about what smiles can really mean. Show students a picture of someone smiling and ask them to write a brief paragraph about it, assuming that the person in the image is smiling because she is happy. Now ask them to look at the same picture, but assume the person is actually angry, and to write a paragraph based on that. Try this same exercise with different emotions—sadness, anxiety, fear, boredom and so forth.
Did the exercise teach students anything about “reading” or interpreting people’s expressions?
Have students “act out” this exercise by “trying out” different kinds of smiles and asking other students to guess if they are supposed to be glad, sad, mad, and so forth.
Find different images that express various emotions. Cover different parts of the face (first the eyes, then the mouth, and so on) and see if students can figure out what the expression is before they have seen the whole image.
What’s New
Start a classroom box in which students write out positive things that have happened in school, such as observations they make of people doing nice things for each other. For example, someone might write, “I lost my jacket and Susie helped me find it, even though she missed part of recess.” Or, “Mrs. Smith stayed after school to help me with my Spanish homework.” Students can sign their names or keep them anonymous. At the end of the week, the notes can be pulled from the box and read aloud, or posted on a communal bulletin board.
What If?
Ask students a series of “think” questions about the images in the exhibition. For instance, “What if it was raining instead of sunny in this picture? What if another figure was present?” Have students come up with their own “what ifs?” How do the questions change students’ perceptions about the images?
Activities for Parents:
Proof Positive
Catch your child being positive. Here’s how: on a large piece of paper, start keeping a record of “miles of smiles” list. Every time your child does something “positive,” record a smile. This might include stopping herself from calling her brother a name; clearing the table without being asked; complementing a friend on winning a race that she wanted to win. A certain number of smiles can be rewarded with anything from a hug to an ice cream.
Smile Box
Start a “Smile Box” to bring smiles to kids who may be less fortunate. Each week, ask your child to put a certain amount of money into the smile box. You can choose (together) an organization to which you would like to send the money—to bring smiles to other children.
In Touch
Help kids get in touch with their emotions by looking through books or magazines together and asking them what they think is going on in several images. Have them talk about what they think is happening. (Why is that man smiling? What else is going on in the picture?) and if they have ever felt the same way. Ask them how they deal with certain feelings and how they might deal more effectively with them. Come up with suggestions together—such as keeping a journal—for helping kids keep track of their feelings and how to deal with them.
Other Happiness Activities
- A wall set up with a large mural-sized paper and directions to “draw something that makes you happy” (a communally drawn mural).
- A mirror with a sign “Smile” over it (Or perhaps several distortion mirrors).
- Write a story with a happy ending or tell about something that made you really happy (bind them together into a happiness magazine).
- Take digital pictures of people smiling and make a smiling wall.
- Make a long shopping list of things that make you happy.
- Set up an audio play station where a child could push a button and hear happy music from a selection of CDs featuring classical to techno pop.
Thanks to Melissa Gordon, PhD for developing these activities.
|
