Suggested Grade/Age Range: Grades 4-6 (ages 9-11)

Activity Objective: The goal of this activity is to emphasize to children the importance of trusting their feelings and to get help from a trusted adult.

Learning Goals
Big Messages to Kids

Link to Ontario Curriculum

Materials Required:

• Trust Your Feelings Scenarios
• Journals or Writer’s Notebooks

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes

• Review over scenarios
• Review over discussion questions
• Have journals ready
• Explore Kids Help Phone website

Task Time: 30-40 minutes

• Present scenarios
• Whole class discussion
• Journal writing

Activity Description:

Opening Discussion:

1.       Introduce the activity by emphasizing the importance of trusting our feelings about situations that make us feel negative emotions (e.g., anxious, angry, frightened, uncomfortable, strange, etc.) and to get help from a trusted adult in any of these situations

2.       Give the children an example:

If someone touched you in a way that you didn’t like and then asked you to keep it a secret, what would you do? Would you keep this kind of secret? How would this make you feel?

Allow a few individuals to volunteer their responses. Reinforce that there are NO secrets about any kind of touch and that if someone has asked you to keep a touch a secret, it is imperative to get help from a trusted adult about this. It is possible that you may feel embarrassed, confused, or scared about telling someone, but trust your feelings and get help. If the adult you tell cannot help you, keep telling until someone provides you with the help you need

Activity:

3.       Explain that as a class, you will be discussing about various scenarios and what to do in them. For each scenario you present, ask the following questions:

• How do you think you will feel in this situation?
• What would be some of your worries around getting help?
• Who can you get help from?
• If the first adult you go to couldn’t help you, who else could you tell to get help?

4.       Emphasize that even if they broke a rule (such as taking the shortcut in one of the scenarios above), their safety is most important and the focus is on making sure one is safe by getting help from a trusted adult

5.       Have a few children make up some situations and ask the questions above for discussion with the whole class

6.       Tell the class that they will now work individually on an entry in their journal on the following questions:

• In a difficult situation like the ones we’ve discussed, who would you go to for help?
• What are some things a helpful adult may say to you?
• If the adult you told did not believe you or did not help you, what could you do?

7.       Circulate and provide support as needed. Give children about 15-20 minutes to work on their journal entries.

Activity Extensions:

Take children through the Kids Help Phone website to help them become aware of this resource and of its availability in times of need

Additional Resources:

• Kids Help Phone
• You may also choose to review the Getting Help Literature Review before implementing this activity. It can be found here