Play the Fun with Feelings game

Planning this activity

• This activity is an adaption of the bean game, which your group may already be familiar with. Instead of pretending to be different sorts of beans, everyone does different actions for different feelings from the story.

1. Gather everyone in a circle and ask them if they can name a feeling people might have. 
2. Ask if anyone can remember any of the feelings in the story.
3. Tell everyone you’re going to play a game all about feelings.
4. Everyone should spread out around the space.
5. Introduce and demonstrate actions for each of the feelings explored in the story, such as calm, nervous, cautious, curious, afraid, excitement and proud. Some examples could be:

• Calm: Sit down with crossed legs and hands resting on your knees. You might feel this way if you’re lying on the grass in the sun, if you’re relaxed, or enjoying a story. You feel calm when you like what you’re doing, but it doesn’t make you excited.
• Scared: Hold hands to face as if biting fingers, eyes wide open.  You may feel scared of something you don’t like or understand. It’s similar to feeling worried. Your heart might beat a bit faster or you might feel a bit sweaty. People can be scared of lots of things, such as spiders, thunder, dogs, heights or being in the dark.
• Cautious: Move around slowly and carefully, looking all around you. You’re being cautious when you’re being very careful, such as when you are crossing the road safely and look in all directions for traffic.
• Curious: Pretend to have a magnifying glass and look at everything with great interest. You’re being curious when you want to find out more about something. You might want to ask lots of questions, or to look closely at something.
• Worried or nervous: Grit teeth and hold hands by side with fingers stretched out. You might feel worried when you do something for the first time or go somewhere new. You might feel like you’ve got butterflies in your stomach. People can be worried about lots of things, such as starting a new school, doing a test, or going to the dentist.
• Excitement: Wave hands in the air and cheer. You feel excitement when you’re very happy about something, and you might feel like you want to jump around. You might feel excited when you’re going to play with your friends or opening a present.
• Proud: Stand up tall with your hands on your hips, look up and smile. You feel proud when you’ve done something really well. It might be something you found difficult, but you tried hard and managed to do it.

3. Everyone should move around the space, in any direction, being careful not to bump into anyone.
4. Call out a feeling, and everyone should do the right action, as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if the group can’t remember every action. Adult volunteers and young leaders could help do the actions for people to copy.
5. Keep playing the game until all the feelings have been used, and everyone is ready to stop.
6. You could make it harder, with the last person to do the action being out. The last player in the game is the winner!

How are you feeling?

1. After the game, sit in a circle. Give out pens or pencils, colouring pencils or felt tips, and paper.
2. Everyone should think about how they’re feeling right now. They could share how they’re feeling with a friend sat next to them or the group if they want to.
3. An adult might need to give some prompts to help them figure this out. Are they feeling happy or sad? Or, do they feel like any of the feelings from the activity?
4. Explain that everyone feels sad sometimes. When we’re sad, it can help to talk about it and to think about things that make us happy.
5. Everyone should draw something that makes them feel happy.
6. At the end, if they’re happy and comfortable to, people could show the group their drawing and tell them about it.