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Part of who we are is linked to our gender. We are physically either male or female. However, ideas about masculinity and femininity have changed over time. In today’s world, it is now accepted that we are all a part of the human family and share the same qualities and emotions regardless of our gender. Being female or being male means different things to each of us.

This worksheet contains words and phrases which can be used in conjunction with our Emotional Learning Cards series What do you Feel? Who are you? Where are you going? and How do we live well with others?
Cut along the dotted lines and display the phrases shuffled and upturned on a flat service to inspire connections between the images on the cards and the emotions they might illicit.

The word ‘family’ has the same root as ‘familiar’. As we know, families are made up of people who are the most familiar to us. We all start life as part of a family, whatever form our family takes. All families are different and every family has their own ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’.

This worksheet can be used as a starting point for talking about and exploring the subject of families. Questions are included to which you can give general answers or examples from your own life. As well, once you’ve completed this worksheet, you might want to look at the A to Z of Emotions cards to see which feelings described you think come up in family life.

Jo Evans and Tara Richards, both A Space therapists share some examples from their work with young people which illustrate how they have used the Emotional Learning Cards in school-based therapy sessions. All the clients’ names have been changed to ensure anonymity.

The word ’emotion’ has its roots in the 12th C French word ’emouvoir’ which means ‘to stir up’. This makes sense – emotions can be strongly felt and often do shake us up! Having said that, they can also lead to the opposite of ‘stirring’ or ‘shaking’- sometimes emotions feel too much so we cut off from them, convincing ourselves that we don’t feel anything at all.

We all need to learn to:

recognise when we’re having an emotional response to something or someone
be able to name the feeling(s)
assess whether or not our strength of feeling is appropriate to what’s happening
work out what our emotional hotspots are
understand the relationship between our emotions, our behaviour and our thinking

This new resource accompanies our Emotional Learning Cards ‘How do we live well with others?’, describing each featured artist’s work on each of the 20 cards. This accessible text draws out the key emotional experiences embedded in the featured images and briefly discusses related themes. Questions are posed to aid exploration and exercises are suggested. These include the option of creating an illustrated ‘dictionary of feelings’ to support learning the language of emotions.

Buy the cards to accompany this resource in our store.

This new resource accompanies our Emotional Learning Cards ‘Who are you? Where are you going?’, describing each featured artist’s work on each of the 20 cards. This accessible text draws out the key emotional experiences embedded in the featured images and briefly discusses related themes. Questions are posed to aid exploration and exercises are suggested. These include the option of creating an illustrated ‘dictionary of feelings’ to support learning the language of emotions.

Buy the cards to accompany this resource in our store.

This new resource accompanies our Emotional Learning Cards ‘What do you feel?’, describing each featured artist’s work on each of the 20 cards. This accessible text draws out the key emotional experiences embedded in the featured images and briefly discusses related themes. Questions are posed to aid exploration and exercises are suggested. These include the option of creating an illustrated ‘dictionary of feelings’ to support learning the language of emotions.

Buy the cards to accompany this resource in our store.

The word ‘bereaved’ comes from Old English. It means to have something or someone taken away. We are bereaved when someone dies. Even though we know that everyone will die, including us, death is very hard for most people to talk about openly.

If you’ve been bereaved, you may want to start by describing your experience of loss. It can be useful to go through the questionnaire entitled ‘B is for Bereavement & how to talk about it’. (It can be found at the end of this set of worksheets.) Or you may prefer to start with a more general exploration of death and common reactions to it by going through this worksheet. You might also look at the cards in the A-Z of Emotions and pick out the feelings which apply to you. There is no right or wrong way to approach the subject. What is important is to find a way into talking about it even if it might feel difficult at first.

This resource is based on a project undertaken by Iniva and A Space which was commissioned and part-funded by Newport Primary School. The exercises included in this pack can be used in any setting: the classroom, parent/carer groups, creative therapy sessions or counselling/ psychotherapy groups.

Newport School chose to share family histories and stories about places of origin and family / community histories through making quilt squares with artist Aya Haidar. Aya introduced key features from the history of quilt making including:

Social histories: how cultures through the centuries have used quilt making to record stories and important events
Political histories: how groups have used the concept of making a ‘quilt’ or a fabric ‘banner’ to lobby for social change
You can read more about this project entitled A Place for Conversation and view some of the quilt samples made by the Newport parents/carers and children on Iniva’s website.