Help your students calm down when they experience a big emotion with this printable coping skills toolbox template.
Equip Your Students with Coping Skills
Imagine your mind is like a toolbox. Inside it, you keep all sorts of tools to help you handle different situations. Just like a toolbox helps a handy person fix things around the house, a coping skills toolbox can help manage big emotions. It’s a collection of techniques and strategies that can be pulled out and used when feeling upset, stressed, anxious or any other strong emotion! Having a coping skills toolbox can be really helpful, especially when facing challenges or difficult moments.
While it might be easy for adults to mentally visualize and apply the tools in their coping skills toolbox, the young people we work with in our classrooms need something a little more literal to work with! That’s why the experienced teachers at Teach Starter have created this printable coping skills toolbox. It contains:
- Instructions
- Black-and-white toolbox template
- A set of blank tools (for students who wish to choose their own coping skills)
- A set of tools containing the following five pre-selected calm-down strategies:
- Doing deep, mindful breaths.
- Counting slowly to ten.
- Asking an adult for help.
- Doing some exercise.
- Touching or hugging a soft object.
To create their coping skills toolbox, students will need to:
- Color in and cut out the toolkit and tools.
- Fold the toolkit in half like a card, and glue the tools inside.
- Use the toolkit as a visual reminder of calm-down strategies to use when experiencing a big emotion.
The templates contained within this PDF resource are black and white to enable students to color them according to their own preferences.
Remember, the more your students practice using their coping skills toolkit, the better they will become at managing their emotions and handling challenging situations. Just like a normal toolbox needs regular maintenance, it’s a good idea to help your students practice using their coping skills, even when they’re not feeling upset. This will make it much easier to apply these skills when they really need them!
More Coping Skills for Kids
Looking for inspiration when it comes to additional coping skills for kids? Remember, coping skills work best when they are personalized for each individual student. Here are some more great calm-down strategies that can be added to your students’ coping skills toolbox and used to manage those big emotions:
- Drawing a picture or coloring
- Listening to music
- Spending some time in nature
- Reading a book
- Doing some yoga
- Having a cool drink of water
- Finding a quiet place to sit
- Visualizing a special place
- Smelling a calming scent
- Using positive self-talk
Download and Print This Coping Skills Toolbox
Use the Download button to access this resource.
Ensure that your students’ toolkits are kept somewhere safe and that they are readily available whenever the need arises.
Each download contains two sets of blank tools and two sets of tools containing the pre-selected strategies. Please save paper by limiting copies accordingly.
More Coping Skills for Kids
Looking for more activities to help develop your students’ emotional self-regulation? Click below for more teacher-created resources!
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Calm-Down Strategy Cards
Help your students choose and apply strategies when they need to calm down with this comprehensive set of calm-down strategy cards.
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Coping Skills Desk Plates
Download and print calm-down strategy desk plates for your students so they can respond appropriately to big emotions.
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Emotional Self-Regulation Poster
Promote emotional awareness and self-regulation in your classroom with this classroom poster.
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