mood-o-meter

One of my main goals for my classroom this year is to teach my students how to communicate their emotions and use productive and healthy coping mechanisms.
So, I introduce to Miss Forster's first grade class...

....DRUMROLL PLEASE.....

The mood-o-meter!!

Here's an example of a mood meter that I found online:

Basically, here's how it works/how I want to use it. The colors can represent different types of feelings on the spectrum. 

Blue: low energy/unpleasant=sad, depressed, sulky, tired, etc.

Green: low energy/pleasant=happy, content, peaceful, calm, etc.

Yellow: high energy/pleasant=excited, surprised, enthusiastic, etc.

Red: high energy/unpleasant=angry, frustrated, annoyed, etc.

In our classroom this year, we are going to start the year off by learning about this spectrum of emotions-->the mood meter. We'll discuss what the different colors represent, what someone looks like when they're feeling each emotion, what you feel like doing when you're experiencing the mood/emotion, how we can help someone, and a healthy way to cope. We'll do some coloring activities, show some faces of emotions, and practice using our own mood meter.

Here are the faces I'll use for week one to introduce the basics of the mood meter:

ANGRY

EXCITED

HAPPY

\

SAD

And here is a picture of the mood meters I made for my classroom and my fellow first grade teacher:

Ultimately, I want my students to be able to walk into the room, find their name, and place it on the mood meter to express how he/she is feeling at any given time/in the morning/that day.

Some coping techniques I'm considering for when they're feeling negative emotions and need to take a break:

- getting crayons of the color they're feeling and drawing a picture to express how they're feeling

-getting fabric pieces and building a picture with the coordinating color to express how they're feeling

These are hands-on ways for them to take out any anger/frustration and also distract them from the situation that is causing the emotion. It also gives them another way to communicate their feelings to me or any other teacher/adult.

Fabric Feelings Boxes

-when a student recognize that he/she needs to take a break due to negative actions/feelings, they will be able to be the color that describes their mood and use these fabric strips on the carpet to express their emotions (either by making a picture, squeezing and stretching them, or throwing them around  a little to get the stress out).

-I plan to write different emotions on the outside of the box in sharpie as we learn new words to describes our moods/feelings.