The 20th March is the UN’s 4th International Day of Happiness. So, after the success of our Kindness activities, we thought we’d give you a ‘Happiness’ Activity to use with your pupils and hope you enjoy it!

Overview
This ‘happiness’ activity is suitable for any age and asks pupils to consider what ‘happiness’ really is and what it means to them.

Introduction

• Give out flip-chart paper and pens to small groups of pupils.
• Introduce the word ‘happiness’ and ask them to brainstorm onto the paper what they think happiness is.
• Ask each group to present their flip chart to the class and discuss commonalitities and differences.

Main

• Highlight from the flip-chart activity that happiness means different things to different people – and that’s fine as we are all different!
• Introduce ‘World Happiness Day’ and explain that you’ll be looking at happiness in more detail and what it means to them during this lesson

What does happy feel like?

• Ask pupils to think/pair/share what being happy feels like to them? (e.g. warm, safe, calm).
• Discuss as a class and make a list on the board of the words they use.

What makes me happy?

• Explain that it’s a good thing to know what makes us feel those feelings and ask pupils to share why they think that is the case? (So we can cheer ourselves up when we feel down, or can calm oursleves when we feel a bit stressed out, or just do the things that make us happy more so that we are happier in our lives).
• Emphasise that often the things that make us happy are small, everyday things rather than large, extensive purchases!
• Ask pupils to consider the things that make them feel that way. You could share your own example to help them (e.g. reading a book with the fire on and my dog snoring on my knee).
• Give pupils 5 minutes to write in their books or on paper what makes them happy. You could split this into home / school and alone time.
• If appropriate for your class, ask some pupils to share their examples.

Happy activities

• Depending on the age of your pupils choose from:
  • Ask pupils to write a poem or an essay about what makes them happy and why.
  • Create a ‘happy display’ as a class by asking them to draw out and annotate one of the things they have identified that makes them happy. Add the words you used to describe how happiness feels and some add in happy stories and pictures.
  • Ask pupils to view the research on what makes people happy and present their findings to the class.

Plenary:

• Ask a few pupils to share their work and celebrate the happiness and warm, fuzzy feelings you have created in your class by focussing on happiness.
• Ask pupils to ‘pass the happiness on’ by talking to at least one other person about happiness today.

Ideas for extension:

• You could ask pupils to create and give a ‘happiness’ assembly, or simply to go and talk to another class about happiness.

 

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