GENERIC EXTENSION ACTIVITIES

The following activities are designed for use with any Heart Bright Learning story or poem, but can be adapted to any reading material in your classroom. These activities foster active engagement with the text, which improves enjoyment and comprehension. These activities also reinforce Social Emotional Learning (SEL) outcomes, helping children to build empathy, self-awareness, and resilience.


For the SEL Story Collection, the printable story Booklet that accompanies each story is a good resource for use with these generic activities.


LITERACY & DISCUSSION
Purpose: Enhances communication, critical thinking, and understanding of characters’ motivations and emotions.

  • Recall and retell story events.
  • Compare and contrast two characters, e.g. Tortoise and Rabbit.
  • Identify and use new vocabulary words.
  • Find rhymes and phonetic patterns.
  • Make and check story predictions based on the title.
  • Infer the author’s purpose.
  • Identify and extend metaphors or similes.


SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL ROLE PLAY
Purpose: Builds relationship skills and responsible decision-making through role-based dialogue.

  • Act out a scene in which a character expresses their feelings to another character.
  • In pairs, do mock interviews where one child plays a supportive friend helping another share what’s troubling them.
  • Discuss empathy, e.g. “Have you ever been with someone who felt the way Rabbit does?”

 

FEELINGS CHART
Purpose: Helps students reflect on their own emotions, developing self-awareness and self-management skills.

  • Create a "Feelings Chart" for students to explore different emotions.
  • After reading the story, identify when characters in the story felt strong emotions, e.g. fear, sadness, gratefulness, etc.
  • Discuss how the feelings that students have identified show up in their own lives.

 

ART
Purpose: Provides a creative outlet for expressing emotions and understanding emotional cues in others.

  • Draw or paint characters and story scenes.
  • Build models using clay, recycled materials, or tongue depressors.
  • Design wearable art: animal masks, paw gloves, or feathered hats.
  • Create side-by-side self-portraits: This is me when I'm happy. This is me when I'm sad.
  • Design abstract or symbolic art showing emotions like loneliness, courage, or joy.
  • Discuss how colors and shapes can express feelings.
  • Discuss why people make art when they feel strong emotions.
  • Consider whether all art is beautiful or if some is powerful even without being pretty.

 

EXPRESSING FEELINGS THROUGH MOVEMENT
Purpose: Fosters self-awareness and emotional expression through physical and artistic modes.

  • Act out different feelings—happy, tired, excited, worried—through body movement, posture, or facial expression.
  • Alternate between emotions to explore how quickly and subtly feelings can change.
  • Create dances to represent different feelings or transitions between emotional states.

 

CREATIVE WRITING
Purpose: Develops perspective-taking and allows students to explore alternative outcomes and emotional responses.

  • Write a new ending to the story.
  • Add a twist to the plot.
  • Introduce a new character or an unexpected event.
  • Rewrite the story using the students’ names and personal experiences.
  • Add new animal characters with dialogue contributed by the children.
  • Explore a sequel: What might happen the next day?

 

MUSIC & RHYTHM
Purpose: Builds awareness of emotional tone and supports regulation through rhythm and sound.

  • Incorporate rhythm instruments (drums, rattles, shakers) to represent actions or moods.
  • Add sound effects during narration (e.g., flute for birds, maracas for snake, drums for slow steps).
  • If the story includes rhymes or songs, try setting them to familiar tunes like 'Twinkle, Twinkle' or 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'
  • Invite students to create their own background soundscapes or mini-musicals based on a scene’s mood or setting.

 

STORY THEATER
Purpose: Encourages empathy, collaboration, and understanding of multiple perspectives.

  • Encourage children to bring the story to life through dramatic play.
  • Allow students to choose or be assigned roles based on the characters. Rotate roles to allow multiple students to participate.
  • Prompt students to think creatively about simple costume pieces or props that
    represent their character—such as paper ears for Rabbit or a stuffed cape for Tortoise’s shell. Name tags or paper sashes with the character’s name can substitute for costumes.
  • Use chairs and fabric to create environments (dens, forests, streams). Let children draw simple backdrops on butcher paper.
  • Explain that the class will act out the story as you narrate it. As director, whisper lines to children to repeat in character.
  • Pause between scenes to ask how characters feel and what motivates their actions.
  • Invite children to act out multiple responses to a scene—what else could the character have done?
  • Use toy animals in sand trays or tabletop settings for independent dramatization.



MATH CONNECTIONS
Purpose: Strengthens engagement and problem-solving skills through character-based contexts.

  • Let a character teach a math concept (e.g., Rabbit counts how many carrots she can carry).
  • Create word problems based on story scenarios.
  • Use character shapes or sizes for comparison, sorting, and graphing activities.
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