Today we are excited to officially release the second edition of the My Feelings Workbook. Originally released a little over four years ago, the My Feelings Workbook has easily become one of the most popular resources created by the Hope 4 Hurting Kids family.
The book covers 50 different emotions that children or teens will likely face at some point during their youth or adolescence. These emotions, and their associated emoticons, are presented on two index pages at the beginning of the book. Readers can use the index to identify how they’re feeling at any particular moment. The emoticons provide younger children with visual clues as to what each emotion represents.
There is an individual activity page for each of the fifty emotions (you can see the example for “Scared” here. Each colorful emotion page displays the name of the emotion and the associated emoticon. A “kid friendly” definition is provided for each emotion, and various exercises designed to help the user better understand each emotion and how it affects them personally.
Each emotion includes exercises labeled “When I Am Feeling _____” and “What Makes Me Feel _____?” The “When I Am Feeling _____” section on each page encourages the user to write about, or draw, what their face, body and insides might look like when they are feeling a particular emotion. The “What Makes Me Feel _____?” includes two boxes, one with a green check mark and one with a red x, to draw or list out times, people and things that do and do not make the user feel that particular emotion. Each page is set up the same way so younger kids should need minimal guidance in using the resource.
I originally wrote this article in the aftermath of the events in Newtown, CT on December 14, 2012. At the time, the deaths of the 20 six and seven year olds from that elementary school and the six staff members were still fresh in our memories and hearts. In my own house, and in church on Sunday morning, I was faced with kids who were both afraid that something like that could happen at their school and mourning not only the loss of life but a certain loss of innocence. In the years since, we have continued to see stories of tragedy in the news and in our neighborhoods. Our kids continue to be bombarded with information and images of human beings at their lowest moments. This article was written in response to a tragedy, but we would do well to be prepared to help our kids deal with the next tragedy before it happens. The purpose of this article is to help parents, children’s ministry workers, teachers and anyone else who works with kids to process tragedy.
Recently the Children’s Pastor’s Conference was held at the Disney World Conference Center in Orlando, FL. I’ve been to other conferences at this location, and something I’ve notice every time is the way Disney treats children. This got me to thinking about how our churches treat children. Today, I want to explore some concepts and ideas that sparked my imagination when it comes to ministering to the child of divorce in our churches.
