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Teachers play a crucial role in fostering a child’s academic, social, and emotional development. Implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) activities in elementary education equips students with the tools to recognize their emotions and make informed choices. These activities also enhance classroom relationships and promote community building. Just a few minutes daily can cultivate an emotionally resilient classroom ready to engage in learning.
Ignite Connections with SEL Activities for Kids
Engaging SEL activities tailored for elementary students facilitate emotional check-ins and heighten emotional awareness. Start the day positively with a morning circle time to prepare everyone for learning.
- Unleash Your Superpower: Students select a morning superpower, such as a bravery boost or kindness shield, and discuss how they will utilize it to enhance self-management skills.
- Flip Your Feelings: In a circle, students reveal a challenging emotion they are facing and pair it with a strategy for regulation, like seeking assistance or stretching.
- Settle into Stillness: Conduct a brief mindfulness warm-up where students sit quietly and identify three distinct sounds in the room.
- Forecast Your Feelings: Encourage students to describe their current emotions using weather metaphors, fostering self-awareness of their feelings.
- Launch a Kindness Quest: Challenge students with a mini-mission—like befriending a new classmate or helping someone—to cultivate responsible decision-making and empathy.
Confidence Activity: Confidence SEL Discussion Prompts for Counseling
By Counselor Keri
Grades: 4th-6th
Guide your upper elementary students in exploring what confidence embodies through flash cards. Utilize the confidence card prompts to initiate discussions on self-esteem, reflect on past experiences, and enhance feelings of connection.
Express Emotions through Art and Drama
Elementary students are beginning to delve into self-awareness and self-management. Young learners are also starting to grasp relationship skills. These straightforward art and drama prompts can easily adapt to suit any grade-level morning circles, small group counseling, or calm-down corner strategies.
- Create Emotion Cards: Students illustrate their current feelings on cards and then share with a partner to discuss healthy emotional management strategies.
- Music Mood Match: Students choose a song that represents their mood and jot it down, helping them connect with and express their feelings effectively.
- Build Kindness: Through dramatic play and body movements, students explore what acts of kindness look and feel like in practice.
- Mirror Me with Emotional Portraits: Students draw themselves as they feel in the moment, then create a second portrait depicting how they aspire to feel, utilizing color and expression to convey emotion.
- Make Mood Swirls: Students use swirling, curling, or sharp strokes to manifest their current emotions in a landscape or abstract artwork.
- Model the Masters: Showcase artworks by moody masters like Van Gogh or Picasso, and have students replicate the style to depict their own emotional state.
Dramatic Play Bakery for Social Emotional Learning – Kindergarten Center
By Namasteinschool1
Grades: PreK-2nd
Transform your calming corner into a dramatic play center with straightforward self-regulation prompts. This 92-page PDF resource includes editable templates, setup suggestions, role name tags, open and close signs, and play money, among other materials.
Pause for Mindfulness Moments
Mindfulness enhances elementary students’ focus and heightens emotional awareness. It also establishes the groundwork for healthy mental habits that persist into SEL activities in high school.
- Time Travel Breathing: Students explore various breathing techniques for each “era,” such as during the time of dinosaurs or the Space Race, using it as an enjoyable mindfulness moment to concentrate and calm themselves.
- Glow Worm Moments: Students close their eyes and visualize their bodies as glow worms, observing their light gradually dimming and brightening while synchronizing their breath with the movement.
- Pop the Bubble with Your Breath: Students imagine holding bubble wrap in their hands—squeezing and inhaling deeply to “pop” a bubble, then exhaling slowly to release it, aiding in the practice of controlled breathing and focus.
Affirmation Station – Mirror Printouts – Neutrals by Learning with Ms Lane
By Learning with Mrs. Lane
Grades: K-6th
This resource aids in establishing an affirmation station, offering printable affirmations to place around mirrors, helping students recognize their worth and transform negative thoughts into positive affirmations. It includes labels, affirmations, “I am” templates, and blank templates.
Cultivate Community with SEL Kindness Projects
A classroom flourishes when kindness is woven into everyday routines. These SEL kindness team-building activities empower students to transform empathy into action while fostering a supportive, connected community. They can seamlessly integrate into transitions and small group projects or serve as gratitude activities for children.
- Build a Constellation of Compliments: Create a constellation bulletin board where students add a star each time they give or receive a compliment, visually celebrating kindness in the classroom.
- Deliver Kindness Cards: Students craft greeting cards for peers or staff and deliver them weekly, spreading positivity and reinforcing relationships.
- Assemble a Kindness Puzzle: When facing challenges, students write their name and a kind word on a blank puzzle piece and add it to a class puzzle. Over time, the class constructs a collaborative “kindness puzzle” that symbolizes their supportive community.
Random Acts Of Kindness Challenge Cards – Freebie by Counselor Chelsey
By Counselor Chelsey
Grades: K-5th
Encourage students to perform random acts of kindness daily using kindness cards. These 15 cards present students with simple challenges that are easy to incorporate during recess or lunch.
Collaborate on Solutions with Real-World Problem-Solving Tasks
Incorporate real-world problem-solving activities during SEL time, morning meetings, or whenever your class needs a collaborative boost that encourages thinking and connection.
- Design a Kindness Map: Challenge students to map out areas within the school where someone might need assistance or a kind act.
- Resolve a School Recess Conflict: Provide students with a common recess scenario and have them brainstorm solutions to foster communication skills.
- Invent a Kindness Machine: Group students to conceptualize how to build a machine that spreads kindness throughout the class. They can then draw their prototype.
Problem Solving Puzzles (Social Skills Resource!)
By Elementary School Counselor – Rachel
Grades: 2nd-5th
This resource includes directions, 12 problems with three potential solutions, puzzle pieces, a blank puzzle template, and exploring-consequences sheets. Students can collaborate using the discussion questions while reviewing a poster on positive and negative consequences.
Reflect with SEL Activities for Elementary Students
Reflection naturally integrates into both ELA writing sessions and brief classroom check-ins. Utilize straightforward SEL activities for elementary students to help them pause and express their emotions meaningfully.
- Journal Your Journey: Use prompts to encourage students to reflect on their emotions for the day or week, helping them understand what they learn from their feelings.
- Compose a Mood Poem: Students select an emotion they experienced during the week and craft a poem expressing how it felt.
- Turn into a Character: Students envision themselves as a storybook character and reflect on how their feelings have influenced their school narrative.
- Create a Feeling Flipbook: Students list several simple emotions and note what triggers those feelings. They can refer back to their flipbook during check-ins to track and express emotions.
- Write a Letter to Your Emotions: Students choose a powerful emotion they felt over the week and compose a letter to it.
Check In Check Out Forms for SEL Needs | Feelings, Emotions, & Behavior Support
By Coconut Counselor
Grades: Not Specific
Utilize a simple check-in and check-out form to connect with your elementary students. Older students can document their feelings of reflection or emotional needs, while younger students might respond aloud to prompts about their experiences with friends and family.
Incorporate Simple SEL Activities into Your Classroom
SEL does not have to be complicated or time-consuming. Even a few minutes each day can provide students the opportunity to acknowledge their feelings, share their thoughts, and enhance their classroom community. Simple SEL moments can profoundly impact helping kids feel connected and ready to learn.
- Engage in deep breathing exercises.
- Take a one-minute stretch break.
- Offer a random compliment.
- Write a thank-you note.
- Share a positive thought.
- Conduct a morning check-in.
- Use an emotion exit ticket.
- Implement a goal-setting sheet.
- Play a “this or that” game.
- Try “Two Truths and a Lie.”
- Task students with finding a friend who meets specific criteria.
- Create a compliment circle.
Foster a Growth Mindset and Relationship Benefits with SEL
Research published in the Psychological Bulletin indicates that SEL significantly enhances students’ attitudes, prosocial behaviors, and academic performance. When students are empowered to identify their feelings and recognize their triggers, they learn to manage emotions healthily and appropriately.
In addition to supporting self-management, SEL aids children in strengthening relationships, reducing conflicts, and developing responsible decision-making abilities. SEL activities for elementary students also provide opportunities for reflection on their actions and understanding of the consequences.
Elevate SEL with TPT Activities
Ensure SEL becomes an integral part of your learning routine by integrating it across your curriculum. Students can reflect on their emotions, enhance their writing skills, and address real-world issues in subjects like science, all while cultivating a robust, connected classroom community. TPT is here to support your class’s journey through elementary SEL resources. Make social-emotional learning a significant and impactful aspect of each school day.
