Family Activity Guide: Mood Jars

Here's a fun activity to get your whole family to open up about their feelings.

The holidays often spark big emotions, which can impact your family's dynamics. Here's a fun activity to help support healthy communication and interactions in your family, which we created in partnership with Little Renegades: Mood Jars! 🌟

Sharing what we're feeling helps ourselves and others understand why we may be acting in a certain way. This helps us have more empathy and respond to others in a more gentle and caring way.

For many children and adults, talking about emotions is not the preferred way of communicating their feelings. This Mood Jars activity will help your family share their feelings in a fun and low-stress way.

Here's how to do this activity:

1. Find a few jars or glasses around the house.
2. Label each jar or glass with a different emotion.
3. Make sure to use a mix of positive and negative emotions, like "calm," "excited," "sad," "worried," and "glad."
4. Decorate each jar! Be as creative as you want.
5. Write the name of each family member on a popsicle stick.
6. Every morning or evening, have each family member put their popsicle stick in the jar that best represents their feelings.

Increased self-awareness also helps us learn when to use calming strategies, like taking deep breaths.

This activity is just one of many in our Holiday Family Activity Guide, which is part of the free Holiday Family Mental Health Toolkit. Simply start by answering a few questions, and you'll get a customized report about how your family is doing, and instantly unlock the complete activity guide.

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