The Hopes and Fears Tree is colorful craft to help kids understand that no matter what they’re worried about, they can still achieve their hopes and dreams.

Supplies Needed

• Poster board or large sheet of paper
• Markers, pens or pencils
• Construction Paper (Green, brown and a variety of other colors)
• Scissors
• Glue

Making a Hopes and Fears Tree

• Cut a rough oval to serve as the dirt for your tree.
• Make a tree with branches out of the green construction paper.
• Pick a color, or colors, of construction paper to represent works. Cut out oval “worm shaped” pieces of construction paper. Don’t worry too much about the form of these.
• Have the children write things that the worry about on the worms and glue those on the dirt around the bottom of the tree.
• Cut out leaves from a variety of colors.
• Have the child write a hope or dream that they have and glue those to the branches on the tree.
• As your pasting their hopes and dreams on the tree, remind them that our fears and worries that we overcome can serve as fertilizers out of which our hopes and dreams can grow.
• Share your own personal experiences of where this has been true.
• Encourage the child to hang their Hopes and Fears Tree in their room to remember that our anxieties and fears don’t have to stand in the way of accomplishing our hopes and dreams.

SOURCE OF IDEA: We originally found this idea in the article The New Community College Try from the New York Times and adapted it for working with kids.

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Pool Noodle Fidget Toys are an easy DIY project you can make for, or with, your kids. They are cheaper than fidget spinners, squishies and other fidget toys, and you can mass produce them with relative ease. I’ve worked with kids for years, and for many of those years I was in charge of games with a large group of students. Ever since that time, I’ve kept a box of pool noodles in my basement, because you never know when you’re going to need them! (FYI, you can get a box fairly cheap after summer is over). A standard pool noodle can be used to create 42 fidget toys. Here’s all you need to know:

63 inches – 42 stress relievers

Items Need For Project

• Pool Noodles
• Scissors or a Knife
• Ruler
• Pencil

Instructions

• Mark off sections of approximately 1 1/2 inches (about 3.8 cm) each using a ruler and a pencil.
• Cut the pool noodles using the scissors or a knife (we’ve found that a serrated bread knife works really well.

How to Use Pool Noodle Fidget Toys

• First, don’t worry about imperfections. You can see above that they don’t all turn out perfect. They still work.
• Squeeze pool noodle whenever you feel stressed, afraid, worried or other intense emotions or just want to fidget.
• Think about the motion of your hand squeezing the pool noodle and releasing. Watch as the pool noodle scrunches up then goes back to its original form.
• Repeat as needed. 🙂

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A Scream Box is a fun and effective way to vent some of those intense emotions that build up inside like anger, fear and stress. While breathing, physical activity and talking about it are great ways to help deal difficult emotions, sometimes you just need to scream! Handled correctly, this can be a therapeutic way to vent some of that frustration. Screaming however is not always socially acceptable or appropriate. That’s where the Scream Box comes in handy.

The pictures in this article are of a scream box my 13 year-old daughter made.

You can decorate your box however you want, but here are the basic steps:

1. Gather up the following ingredients:
– Cereal box (preferably an empty one).
– Cardboard tube from inside a roll of paper towels.
– Old newspaper or packing paper (regular paper or tissue paper can also work)
– Tape (duct tape works best, but packing tape will also suffice)
– Construction paper or wrapping paper to cover the cereal box
– Items to decorate your box (markers, pencils, stickers, glitter or whatever you want to use)

2. Pack the cardboard tube and the cereal box full of paper. This helps to muffle the sound when you scream.

3. Cut a whole in the top of the box just big enough for the tube to fit in.

4. Insert the tube into the hole and duct tape all the way around the area where the tube meets the box.

5. Decorate your box however you would like.

Using the box is also pretty simple. When you’re frustrated or angry or stressed and other calm down techniques aren’t working, just pull out your scream box and scream into the cardboard tube. It doesn’t totally eliminate sounds, but it will muffle your screams and still let you “get it out.”

Post a picture of your scream box in the comments below so we can see what it looks like!

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About the Book

Colour Away Your Worries is a British coloring book (hence the spelling of colour) designed to help kids deal with the worries in their lives.

Who Is This Book For?

The book is meant for kids and teens who are struggling with anxiety, fear and worry. Though it is meant as a coloring book, even kids who don’t color can get something out of this book.

Our Synopsis of the Book

This book is meant to engage kids in the process of vocalizing and overcoming their worries. It follows a three step process:

1. Get the child to articulate the fear or anxiety.
2. Share the worry by either writing it down or drawing about it.
3. Redirecting thoughts to help the child understand that they can deal with anxiety by thinking about other things.

This book is wonderfully illustrated and engaging. Unlike some workbooks that just encourage kids to make a list of color a picture, this workbooks engages kids at every step along the way.

The book starts by having the user record some introductory things about themselves. It moves from there to understanding that everyone has worries and fears. This is important for kids who so often wrestle with their emotions feeling like they are the only one experiencing it.

From there, the book explores some things that often scare specific people and what our face and body look like when we’re scared. The book differentiates between good/healthy worries and unhealthy worries. The book also offers a good list of coping skills kids can use to help deal with their worries like creating a worry box, letting your worries float away like a balloon, concentrating on something else and many others.

Amazon’s Synopsis

Here’s how Amazon describes the book:

Colour Away Your Worries allows children to de-stress and relax through coloring, doodling, and drawing. Boys and girls will benefit from the stress-relieving effects that increased focus and creativity can provide. There are no rules or complicated step-by-step instructions in these pages—children can simply scribble, scrawl, and shade to their hearts’ content.

What We Liked

The artwork in the book is phenomenal and is reason enough to buy the book. Add to that a very thorough and effective method for dealing with fears and worries and this become one of the best books we have seen for helping kids discover what they’re afraid of and develop coping skills for dealing with it.

What We Didn’t Like

Not much! The book does, I think quite intentionally, use snakes and monsters as part of the process of getting kids to talk about their fears. I suppose there is an outside chance that this could present a problem for kids who fear snakes or monsters already. That said, I highly doubt it as the artwork is fun not scary, and the whole purpose of the book is learning how to overcome your worries.

Recommendation

We recommend Colour Away Your Worries for any child or teen struggling with anxiety and worry. The book strikes a wonderful balance between being full of useful information and fun and engaging. The primary target for this book is likely older elementary aged kids, but we can certainly see older kids and teens enjoying and benefiting from it as well. Whether you are a Picasso in training or have the artistic ability of a two year-old, this book will be both fun and helpful.

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One idea for helping kids deal with fear and anxiety is to create a Worry Bot. The idea is simple and provides a way for kids to both talk about their fears and to track them.

Here’s how it works:

1. Build a Worry Bot (or Worry Warrior or Worry Monster). Use can use any sort of boxes or containers so long as the child can put small pieces of paper in the Worry Bot and retrieve them later. We wrapped the lid on both the body and head of Worry Bot separately so it can be removed to insert and remove the papers.
2. Have the child write (or draw) things they are worried or anxious about on the pieces of paper and put them inside the Worry Bot.
3. As the child is recording their fears, talk to them about each one.
4. Put the worries inside of Worry Bot. As you, talk to the child about ways they can deal with their anxiety.
5. Revisit each fear with the child from time to time. As they express that they have moved past an item or overcome that worry, remove that slip of paper from Worry Bot and have the child throw it away.

This idea was originally inspired by Crayola and their Worry Worrier.  You can find other examples by searching for Worry Monster. Use your imagination and work together to make your own Worry Gobbler.

We opted for a Worry Bot, and here’s how we put him together:

• The boxes for the body and the head (as well as the four “legs”) were craft boxes we bought from Hobby Lobby. We bought them for ease, but you could easily re-purpose some empty shipping boxes or anything else you have around the house.
• We used textured paper (also from Hobby Lobby) to give our Worry Bot more of a three-dimensional look. Originally, we had intended to wrap the boxes like gifts, but in the end used decoupage to attach the paper to the boxes.
• The arms were rectangular piece of paper folded with hands cut out of the black textured paper we used for the hat.
• The lettering was a cheap package of stickers which seemed easier than cutting them out individually.
• Add a face and a couple of wiggly eyes, and your Worry Bot comes to life.

If you decide to make a Worry Bot (or monster or warrior) of your own, post a picture in the comments so we can see it!

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In this installment of our series of one page guides for helping children to deal with difficult emotions, we look at helping children to deal with Anxiety. Click here or on the picture above for a pdf version of this graphic.

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Anxiety is a very real problem for many kids and teens, and there is no “quick fix.” However, there are techniques you can use to help a child struggling with anxiety and some of them are quite simple.

This paper airplane technique requires only one piece of paper (almost any type will do), some sort of writing utensil and time to talk to the child dealing with anxiety.

Here’s how it works.

1. Sit down with the anxious child and talk about the things that are causing them anxiety. You can guide the conversation, but make sure to allow the child to lead the conversation and discuss their own anxieties.
2. As you discuss each item which causes anxiety, have the child write it (or draw it) on the piece of paper.
3. Take the opportunity to talk about different breathing techniques and other things the child can do to help when they feel themselves getting anxious.
4. When you are done listing things on the paper, make a paper airplane. If you’re not a paper airplane aficionado, you can find instructions here.
5. Have the child throw the paper airplane across the room or, ideally, into a trash can.

Although a very simple exercise, the Anxiety Paper Airplane has numerous benefits. They include:

• Getting the child talking about their anxieties. Just discussing the various causes of anxiety can alleviate some simple anxieties and will help the child to name the emotions they are feeling.
• The physical motion of throwing the paper airplane (a cross lateral movement as the arm crosses the body) is a stress reliever in and of itself.
• The symbolism of writing down your fears and tossing them in the trash can is a powerful reminder to kids when they feel anxious.

We live in a world where kids experience anxiety at unprecedented levels. This simple technique will help you to help kids get to the bottom of their anxieties and begin the process of moving past them.

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Here at Hope for Hurting Kids, we strive to point you to resources which can help kids, teens, and those who love them deal with some of the many issues kids face today. One way we choose to do that is to offer extensive boards on Pinterest compiling resources and links to resources on a variety of topics. This allows us to make more resources available quicker to help you. You can find our collection of boards on a variety of topics at http://pinterest.com/hope4hurtkids/.

On Pinterest, our goal is to link to as many resources as possible which may be useful. In order to accomplish this, we do not always review each resource which we pin. We also realize that some people are not Pinterest users (note: you do not have to have a Pinterest account in order to utilize our resources). So, we have decided to feature the best of our Pinterest boards here on the site on a regular basis in a feature we call Pinterest Spotlight.

This week we turn to our “Emotions – Anxiety and Stress” Board which features resources to help kids and teens deal with things like anxiety, fear and panic attacks. For kids, these emotions can be the result of circumstances in their lives (like divorce of their parents, bullying, etc.) or just a general sense of impending doom.

Today’s featured pin comes to us from anxietyreliefstree.com which is a website developed by Jennifer Johnson as a result of her own struggles with anxiety. In this infographic, she offers five tips for helping people of any age to relieve anxiety.

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