Sessions and activities to use with your groups

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Over the period of COVID 19 and lockdown children and young people probably experienced great loss in a variety of contexts. They have not been able to physically spend time with friends and extended family, they may have experienced the death of a relative, or they may have lost out on celebrating milestones during the year. Below are some sessions and activities to help you explore what you can do with feelings of loss, as well as recognising and celebrating milestones.

We suggest that you inform parents and carers before running any session on the subject of loss and celebrating milestones. It will help them to know that you will be facilitating conversations about emotions and experiences over lockdown. This is in order to prepare them to check in on their child after the session has finished.

You can run the activities in these session plans over a number of weeks, creating opportunity to open up conversation and build confidence. Let the group slowly work through each activity and unpack them in their own time, creating opportunity for talking and sharing. Younger children will need more guidance and direction.

You can also download this sheet of more active, drama activities. If you want more ideas for using drama to explore experiences of lockdown, you can download this session for free from the TES website.

Created in collaboration with Methodist Global Relationships and our Methodist partners around the world, you can also download the story and activity sheet Around the world: celebrating and remembering.