How Are Happiness and Wellness Related to Self-Concept: SEL for Kindergarten

Happiness and wellness are two important ingredients to a fulfilling and rewarding life. The first adds meaning and value to existence, while the second enables a worthwhile existence. There are many ways to achieve both, but many are only temporary. To achieve long-lasting happiness and health, one needs to focus on strengthening a positive self-concept.

This social-emotional learning lesson is about wellness and happiness resulting from a good self-concept. It teaches kindergarten students that it is difficult to surrender to sadness or let oneself go when they think positively about themselves and, therefore, care about themselves.

Kindergartners begin this lesson by recalling that positive actions result in positive feelings about themselves and improved overall health. This is followed by a fun exercise that gives them sad yet silly situations. Using their "Self-Concept Signals," they try to show how they would feel if they found themselves in these exaggerated instances. All statements are designed for students to show the “Sad Face” side of their signals, which they should raise while also making a sad facial expression.

No matter how hard the kindergartners try, listening to how silly each situation gets makes it difficult for them to keep a straight sad face. This exercise aims to make the students laugh and be happy, making it difficult to focus on the negative. The teacher then explains that laughter is an effective medicine to improve their mood, health, and idea of themselves. However, laughing is not always possible as there are many serious responsibilities and sometimes challenging situations to attend to. What they can always choose to do instead is to think and act positively to improve their feelings and health.

For example, when they feel sad because they are sick, they can take positive action by drinking their medicine and remembering that they are healthy. This can help them feel better and boost their recovery. As a retention strategy, this lesson ends with kindergartners singing and dancing to a song about being happy and healthy.

This lesson encourages kindergarten students to build a positive self-concept to achieve long-lasting happiness and take better care of themselves. By teaching this lesson, schools and educators provide their young students with insights into their behavior and motivation, equipping them with the social-emotional learning core competency of self-awareness. Finally, this also teaches young students to choose the positive way to do something, rather than focusing on the negative, to cultivate their resilience and encourage positive behavior.