Support little learners to name and recognise basic emotions in a calm, safe, age-appropriate way. In this engaging Year 1 lesson, children explore what feelings are, learn that all feelings are okay (and they come and go), and practise identifying happy, sad, angry, and calm through discussion, matching activities, and simple drawing tasks. Perfect for building early emotional literacy and classroom wellbeing routines.

Learning objective: Learn to recognise your basic feelings such as happy, sad, angry, and calm.

What’s included:

• Full lesson slide deck (PDF) with a clear, ready-to-teach structure: Spark Plug, Starter, Key Words, Teacher Explanation, Activities, Exit Task, and Cross-Curricular Links
• Spark Plug “What’s inside the box?” emotion guessing game using facial expressions/poses (no speaking needed)
• Starter prompts: quick whiteboard drawings for “I feel happy when… / sad when… / angry when…”
• Key vocabulary: Feeling (how you feel inside) and Calm (settled and peaceful)
• Activity 1 worksheet: cut-and-match emotions to photographs, with an optional challenge to match coping strategies too
• Activity 2 worksheet: My Feelings Wheel where children draw a time they’ve felt each emotion
• Exit task: children point to the feeling that matches how they feel right now (simple, non-verbal check-in option)
  Cross-curricular extension ideas included (reading, writing, art, maths, science, PE)
  Suggested text to support the theme: The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas
  Editable Canva template included within the resource for interactive teaching (recommended)

Why teachers love it:

• Low-prep, high-impact emotional literacy lesson with simple routines that work brilliantly in KS1
• Child-friendly and trauma-informed: normalises all feelings and supports safe, structured sharing
• Ideal for building a daily feelings check-in culture and helping children take a helpful next step once they can name an emotion

Suitable for: Year 1 / KS1
Unit: Unit 1: Me
Strand: Feelings and Emotional Agility

About The Ripple Project

The Ripple Project is more than a PSHE curriculum. It’s a mission.

A mission to help children grow into emotionally literate, self-regulated, and informed young people, with the knowledge and skills they need for personal, social, health, and economic life.

Here at RevEd, we believe children deserve more than surface-level lessons that rush through big topics. Our lessons are designed to go deeper, revisit themes over time through spiral learning, and help learners practise real-life skills in creative, practical ways that actually stick.

How the programme is organised