RAINBOWS
Fuzzy feelings
What you’ll need
- Paper and pen
- A large, clear space
Aim of the activity
Can you tell if someone feels left out? Put yourself in their shoes and explore ways to include everyone.
Note to leader:
In step 1, you’ll need to act out different feelings. You can choose any you like but include happy, sad, angry, and worried.
Want to understand more about inclusion? Check out the Including all training on our new learning platform.
Step by step
Before you start
Label each of the corners of your space: happy, sad, angry, and worried.
1
Think you know how your friends are feeling? Get ready - your leader will act out some different feelings for you to guess. Can you get them all right?
Try it this way
Get into small groups and have everyone take turns acting out some different feelings for the others to guess.
Top tip
If you don’t know which feeling it could be, that’s okay, it can be hard. And don’t worry if other Rainbows pick a different answer to you.
2
It’s story time! Your leader is going to read aloud animal playtime and you need to guess what the characters are feeling. When you think you know, go to the corner that you think is right. Your leader will show you the four different corners and make sure you know what they mean. Ready? Put your listening ears on and get going.
3
Animal playtime!
One day at the forest playground all the animals were playing. The tiger, parrot and anteater were playing houses together, laughing and having fun. The snake saw them playing and asked, ‘Can I play?’ ‘No, sorry,’ said the tiger, ‘the house is full, there’s no more room.’
The snake sighed and hung her head. ‘That’s ok, I’ll ask someone else.’
Pause – how do you think the snake feels right now?
The black bird and the toucan were playing tag, flying high in the sky. ‘That looks so fun!’ thought the snake. ‘Hey, can I play?’ she shouted up to the birds. ‘Don’t be silly!’ called the birds.
‘Why would we want to play with someone that can’t even fly?’
The snake hissed and stomped her tail. ‘Fine!’ she shouted.
Pause – how do you think the snake feels right now?
The bunnies were playing a bouncing game - it looked amazing! The snake wanted to play but now she wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t have bouncy legs, so they probably won’t want me to play either,” she thought to herself.
‘Hey, do you want to play?’ called one of the bunnies.
‘Oh’ said the snake. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know how to bounce.’
Pause – how do you think the snake feels right now?
I’ll show you!’ The bunnies jumped over to show the snake how to curl up her coils and bounce high into the sky.
‘Wow, amazing!’ cried the snake. ‘Let’s play!’
Pause – how do you think the animals feel right now?
They were having so much fun all the other animals started to notice. ‘I want to play that game’, thought the tiger, the parrot and the anteater.
‘I want to play that game!’, thought the black bird and the toucan. They all wanted to play but they didn’t know what to say to the snake.
Pause – how do you think the animals feel right now?
The snake saw the other animals looking sadly at their wonderful game. ‘Hey!’ she shouted, ‘come and play!’
‘But, what if there’s not enough space?’ said the tiger.
‘But what if we don’t know how to bounce?’ said the toucan.
‘We’ll make room,’ said the snake. ‘You can bounce in your own way!’ The animals all looked at each other.
‘Let’s play!’
Pause – how do you think the animals feel right now?
4
Did everyone choose the same feeling every time? It’s not always easy to guess how someone else is feeling. Sometimes you need to ask or imagine how you would feel if you were them. Go back through the story together. Are there any other emotions you think the animals might have been feeling? What could the animals have done differently to make sure everyone could play all the games?
5
We can all have so much more fun when everyone can take part and have fun together. Can you think of anything you do at Rainbows or school to make sure everyone is included?
Want to learn more about inclusion? Try our Better together unit meeting activity topic.