Worry Flipbook

Students are filled with worry and stress this time of year
due to end of the school year demands and test success pressure.
Now more than ever they need help with anxiety and worry. Students have been
showing up in my office left and right with complaints about worry. It is nice
to have a quick to make activity on hand to help them work through their worry
and get back to learning.

This flipbook is perfect for just that. All together it
takes about a minute to make. I double side print it on colorful paper (make
sure to set your printer to flip on the SHORT side or else it won’t print
correctly), line up the pages, fold the pages over and staple them together. 

Just like that, your flipbook is ready
for use.

It came in handy this week when a little girl and her male best
friend came to my office. She was in tears about have to take the FSA (state
test in Florida). He was trying hard to make her feel better, but he himself
was pretty nervous about the test too. 

I immediately thought of this book.

As we worked through it together, they realized they were
also pretty worried about their friendships. They both didn’t really know how
to talk to others and make new friends. It broke my heart when I saw them draw
these. 

They explained that they didn’t know how to talk to other people. They said they like each other but wanted new friends but didn’t know how to make them. This was great information for me to find out because I now
knew that if they learned some social skills
surrounding friendship some of their extra anxiety would dissipate. I planned
to meet with them the next week to help tackle that issue.

For today, we just tackled their FSA worries since that was
the reason they came in and was the most pressing issue at the time. This flipbook had them explore what
exactly worry means, identify their worry, recognize and explain how worry
makes them feel, ways to take control of their worry, ways to manage worry and
what strategies to control their worry may work best for them. 

They seemed to feel much better when we were done working through it
together. She decided she was going to utilize the “write it out” strategy when
she was worried. She said she was going to write down her problems and let them
be the paper’s problem. He really liked the visualization technique and was
going to picture himself on a beach with his family acing the test.

It really makes me happy when I can help little ones cope with their big
emotions.

You can download this activity by clicking HERE.