Meet Harper! Harper loves to help others. Helping others is when you do something for someone else that makes them feel good. Helping others creates an environment where everyone feels safe, secure and part of the team. You can help others at home, online or in the community. Harper wants everyone to always try to help each other because it makes everyone feel happier. We are creating a long list of how kids like you, from neighborhoods around the globe, are helping each other. We want to make this list long and share it with everyone, especially now when many of us are learning from home. Will you share how you help others and help us build our list? What are some ways you help others?

Use these heart cutouts to send out positive messages of hope and happiness into your community.

Help your children build their self-awareness. Use this worksheet to help them start to think about what the qualities are that make them who they are. You can have a discussion about why it is important that we are all different and how our differences make us special.

We each bring our own uniqueness and traits to the situation, but we are all human, and we are all coping and we can help each other through this. TEAMology wants kids to see that they have neighbors across the world and we can all lift each other up. You can email the pictures of the kids and their houses to elisa@teamology.team to participate.

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of work your child has to do? Did you remember that you had your own work to do? Tell your child that you were feeling overwhelmed, but then you took some deep breaths, decided that getting organized will help, and wrote yourself a schedule for the day.

Sharing your positive self-talk is a great way to model appropriate emotional regulation and help equip your children/students with the same skills. Use this worksheet to help your children work on their own positive self-talk.

Help your children learn the value of helping others by making their own Kindness Calendar. Together, come up with one thing they can do or you can do together for each day that displays kindness.

It is important that after they accomplish their kindness goal each day, that you process it with them. You should ask questions such as:

• “How did you feel when you were kind?”

• “How do you think the other person felt?”

• "Why was this act of kindness important?”

• “How did this act of kindness help someone else?”

• Discuss how every time they are kind, they are helping others.

With kids at home, there is no better time than now to help them discover their strengths. When kids understand what their personal strengths are, they can use them to succeed in other areas of their life. The first step of course is learning more about what those strengths are.

• First, share your strengths with your child.

• Then, use this worksheet to help them discover more about their own strengths.

• After they complete the worksheet, discuss their strengths with them and the categories their strengths fall under.

• Give them ideas as to how they can use their strengths in other areas of their lives.

Talk to your children about mindfulness. Explain that mindfulness is learning how to stay focused on the present. Discuss how the more mindful we become the better our coping skills will be, which will improve our resilience. We will be better equipped to handle stress, to overcome adversity, and to stay calm when things don’t go our way.

A fun way to practice living in the moment and a beginning step toward mindfulness is engaging in activities that keep our whole focus. Use these Mindfulness Scavenger Hunts to help them see how to stay focused on the task at hand. You can also talk about how the scavenger hunts will improve their problem solving skills, another area that can improve their coping skills.

Find an Indoor Scavenger Hunt Here

Find an Outdoor Scavenger Hunt Here

This activity is all about mindful breathing. Talk to your children about the importance of taking deep breaths and how it can calm our bodies and our minds.

Use this worksheet to help them practice mindful breathing; children will take deep breaths and also try to keep their mind on their bodies and their breaths. This short breathing activity is a good first step into the world of mindful breathing.

TEAMology’s character Paco loves mindful breathing. He knows that once your body and mind are calm you are in a better state to think things through and decide on changes or improvements you need to make.

As your children are continuing their distance learning, it is a good idea to conduct a quick check in to see how they are feeling about everything. Use this worksheet to help them understand their feelings and help you understand how they are dealing with and processing everything.

We need to make sure our children understand that being mindful also means taking into consideration how our actions and choices impact others.

When we are mindful of other's feelings, we are more likely to make choices that make others feel good. We are more aware of how our actions might make others feel annoyed, frustrated, angry and sad and can better avoid making those choices. Use this worksheet to help children start to analyze what are mindful behaviors versus what are not.

TEAMology calls engaging in mindful behaviors and actions as being “in the house” because mindful behaviors help those around you and help not only you but your TEAM (whether that is your school or home team) succeed.

A quick, easy mindful activity to teach your children is a grounding exercise. Grounding exercises help you keep your mind on the present and the here and now. They are especially helpful during times of stress and anxiety. As many of us are worried about our current situations and also stressing about the future, there is no better time than now to engage in this form of mindfulness.

An easy one for both children and adults alike is called 5-4-3-2-1. The idea is that you have to focus on yourself and your current surroundings and keep your mind in the present. You should think of 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel, 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste.

Use this worksheet to help your children work through this.

TEAMology’s character Philo teaches students how to become confident problem solvers. He walks students through the problem solving process and also gives them 5 tools to peacefully resolve conflicts. Philo knows that in order for kids and adults to be great decision makers, they must first have strong problem solving skills.

Today, talk to your children about what problem solving is and how they are all smart and strong enough to solve their own problems. (Make sure they understand that they need to get help from an adult if the problem is dangerous or if someone is hurt.) Explain that problem solving is a process that they have to work through to find the best solution. Use the this worksheet to discuss the steps in the problem solving process. Encourage your children to fill it in the next time they are faced with a problem. Explain that the more they practice going through the process one step at a time, the better they will be at solving their problems in the moment.

For this Rose, Bud, Thorn activity you will identify your strengths, positive things to look forward to and areas of need or areas to improve.

Explain to your children that when they are able to identify their areas of need, they can make decisions about how best to meet those needs or get the help they need to improve those areas. Use this worksheet to walk your children through the activity. For the Rose category they should write things they are good at or proud of. For the Bud category they should write things they are looking forward to. For the Thorn category they should write things they are struggling with, finding hard, or wish they could change.

After your children finish the activity, explain to them that everything they wrote under the Rose are their strengths and help them see how these things make them stronger and can help them in other areas. Talk to them about how they should take everything under their Thorns and make decisions about how they are going to get help for those areas or what they are going to do to turn things around.

This activity on Self-Management is about building a toolbox of coping skills. Once children understand their emotions, different things that make them feel different emotions and possible triggers for more intense emotions, they then need to learn the skills to handle those emotions, express them appropriately, and calm down when necessary. These are called coping skills. TEAMology’s character Ruby knows that when you have a strong set of coping skills you are more likely to be resilient when faced with adversity and triggering emotional events.

Talk to your children about coping skills. Explain that coping skills are what we use to get us through hard or challenging situations, help us keep a clear head when faced with problems or conflicts and bounce back from mistakes, failures or sad events. Use the this worksheet to help your children build their own coping skills tool boxes. It is important that you first talk through several coping options with them so they can find the ones that will work best for them.

Some possible coping skills are as follows:

• Grounding exercises (use TEAMology’s 5-4-3-2-1)

• Breathing exercises (use TEAMology’s Mindful Breathing)

• Drawing/coloring

• Journaling

• Exercising (walking, running, jumping jacks, riding a bike etc)

• Yoga

• Counting to 10 or 20

• Using positive affirmations and self talk

• Reading

• Listening to music

• Talking it out with an adult

• Taking a nap

• Playing an instrument

• Squeezing a stress ball or Play Dough

• Hugging an animal

• Building/making something creative