When students walk into my counseling office, one of the first wall decorations they see is my feelings tapestry. This is a new office decor item I purchased this school year, and the kids love it! The tapestry helps students talk about their feelings. Usually, a student will walk in and point to their feelings. I work with students from pre-k to 5th grade, and I’ve had students of all ages use the tapestry to identify their feelings. I hold it up using Command clips. I am not sure how other people hang tapestries but the Command clips work fine for my office with the brick school building walls.

The emotions on the tapestry are happy, angry, sad, excited, jealous, surprised, bored, embarrassed, confused, tired, shy, silly, disappointed, worried, scared, and frustrated. It is a great icebreaker, allowing the students to discuss how they feel. Another item I use is the Lakeshore How Do You Feel slider. I saw a student today who picked up the emotion slider and was surprised to see it was on “sad”. He was concerned why someone who had used my emotion slider last was sad. It opened a great conversation on why he was feeling the way he was feeling today.

It is important to discuss feelings with students. Using icebreaker tools is very helpful, especially with younger grade levels.