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A disappointment is something we encounter every day: the baseball game that we were looking
forward to has been canceled, our mother didn't like a birthday present we gave her or the
weather spoiled our plans for a trip. How to face such situations? How to cope with a
disappointment? It is not a simple experience and each person feels it differently. A situation
when our expectations weren't met because someone let us down is different from a situation when
bad weather spoiled our plans. Today, we will not talk about disappointments, but we will learn
how to let them go and be free from their tormenting. |
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Guessing game. Children split into 2 groups and play a guessing game: something is
hidden in the left or right hand behind one's back and a partner has to guess in which hand it
is. After a while the roles are changed: those guessing are now hiding the object in one of
their hands.
Nonverbal feedback: How do you feel when you fail to guess the right hand?
Show your disappointment through a gesture (pantomime).
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The balloon of disappointments. Imagine one of your disappointments. Give it a name,
as if it were the title of a story. Now draw a balloon as it is in this picture in the manual:
a balloon with a basket that is fixed by ropes to the ground. When everyone has done his/her
drawing, the teacher-facilitator can say. "So this is now YOUR disappointment" - you have the
name for it in your head, think about how you felt at that time. Choose the colour that fits
your feelings and colour in the balloon.
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The colour of my anger, sadness and revenge. What holds this balloon to the ground?
The three ropes have their names too. If we think of this bal-loon as our disappointment, then
one rope is ANGER, the other SADNESS and the third REVENGE. Write these names for the ropes on
your drawing. The children split into groups of four. Everyone in the group shares his/her
feeling with the others: they talk about their specific anger in their specific situation - and
then they colour that rope. Then they talk about their sadness - and colour the rope of sadness.
Lastly they talk about what act of revenge they might think of doing - and colour the rope of
revenge.
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Untying the balloon of disappointment. Big group again. The children will close their
eyes and think of their balloon of disappointment, how it looks like lying in the grass in a
big, big meadow, with the many colours they gave it. The balloon is fixed to the ground. Think
about the surround-ings, what do you see? What is the weather like? Are there any people around
looking at the balloon? Or is there no one to see the beautiful colours and the taking off of
the balloon. Look closely at the ropes - which colour did you choose for each rope? Imagine that
the rope of ANGER is slowly untying and it falls onto the grass so that the balloon is now fixed
with only two ends. The following rope is the rope of REVENGE. It is slowly falling onto the
grass and you can see the colour of that rope on the grass. One mouse is biting the end of the
rope and then disappearing into its hole in the meadow. The last rope that you untie is the one
of SADNESS. When that one has fallen onto the ground the balloon has started to take off,
towards the sky. You are watching how it slowly moves and sways and disappears into the
distance.
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The children split into the same groups of four and talk about what they experienced. How do
they feel now regarding their disappointment?
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Touch. The final activity is accompanied by music. The children try to keep a balloon
in the air by hitting it with their NOSES, ELBOWS, LEGS, BACKS, HEADS, LITTLE FINGERS (one
child gives loud instructions calling out these parts of the body).
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