Resilience jars

Learning level/s: Years 3 and 4

Focus area/s: Mental health and wellbeing

Description: Students recycled glass jars into mental health focused ‘resilience’ jars which they use as a stress-relieving tool. Each student filled their jar with glitter and water which creates a snow-dome effect when shaken. Students shake the jar when they felt angry or overwhelmed and focus on their breathing as the glitter settles. The activity involves students thinking creatively about repurposing an everyday object for building and maintaining resilience and selecting glitter colours and other inserts such as a note or image to help them enact resilience. They also designed mini posters identifying strategies for being resilient and other coping skills.

Measures of success: Students can identify emotional strategies for being resilient; students can identify when/in what state of mind the resilience jar may be useful for them; students can articulate how the jar might be useful for someone else.