Identify the personal qualities that make you resilient and add them as ingredients to your special Resilience Pizza
What you’ll need: Paper and card (different colours if possible, but can be coloured with pens, pencils or paints if not available), glue, coloured pens or pencils
What’s it for?
This activity will help you to appreciate the qualities that make you resilient. Resilience is your ability to cope with life’s stresses and challenges. Knowing which main areas you should work on to improve your resilience will help if you ever go through stressful or difficult times.
Check In:
Notice how you’re feeling right now. Close your eyes and notice what’s going on inside your mind and body.
How are you feeling?
What are you thinking?
How does your body feel?
Method:
The make up of everyone’s resilience pizza will be a bit different, and even yours might change over time! We’re going to make a pizza collage using different coloured pieces of paper and card and sticking them all together.
You will need to:
Cut out a big round piece of card or paper for the base of the pizza.
Cut out a squiggly, odd shape, just under the size of the pizza base for the tomato sauce
Cut out some blobs of delicious mozzarella cheese
Think about what your favourite pizza toppings are (for example, olives, basil leaves, pepperoni, hot chilli, sweet peppers, pineapple pieces)
Choose three different toppings and cut these out (you might need more than one of each to go on top of the pizza)
On the card representing the base of the pizza write down around the edge the people that look after you and make you feel secure and loved.
On the card representing the tomato sauce write down around the edge the names of your special friends - people that look out for you. Stick it on top of the pizza base making sure you don’t cover the names of the people that look after you!
On the card representing the blobs of mozzarella cheese write down the different things you are good at educationally - like your best subjects at school, or something that you study outside of school. Stick these down on top of your tomato base making sure you don’t cover the names of your special friends.
On one of your toppings, write down all your talents and interests (if you’ve chosen olives as a topping, for example, write a different talent and interest on each of the olives). Stick these down in the gaps, leaving space for your other two toppings!
On the second of your toppings write down all the positive qualities you have that are important to you (for example, if you’ve chosen spicy chillies for your pizza, write on the them qualities like ‘fairness’, ‘honesty’, ‘hope’, ‘caring’, etc.). Stick these down.
On your third topping write down your social skills, things like ‘friendliness’, ‘good listener’, ‘helpful’, etc. Stick these down.
Spend a moment looking at your Resilience Pizza and notice all the ingredients that support you in your life! How does it feel to see them all laid out in front of you? Do you think it would be a tasty pizza?
Extra Activity: Show your Resilience Pizza to some of the people you included. If they’re not in your household, you could send them a picture of it, or show them online. See how they react. You could also do this activity with a friend or family member and then compare your pizzas - how are they the same or different?
When you’ve finished, spend a moment reflecting on the activity and ask yourself the following questions:
Did you learn anything new about yourself while you did this activity?
How resilient do you feel after completing this activity?
Was it easy or hard to think of all the different people and qualities that make you resilient?
If you showed your Resilience Pizza to someone, how did they react? Can they think of any other ways in which you are resilient?
Conclusion:
This activity helps you to identify the qualities that make you resilient. These are taken from some research by Daniel and Wassell (2002) who identified six domains of resilience which are: a secure base, education, friendships, talents and interests, positive values, and social competencies. In which of these areas are you strongest in? What could you turn to if you were feeling stressed?
Take a moment to notice how you are feeling at the end of this activity. Did you discover anything surprising? What can you take away to make you feel better about yourself from this activity?
If you would like to, share something about your experience with this activity with someone you live with! Ask the person who looks after you to send us an email if you have any questions or comments about the activity, or would like to send us any pictures (info@catcorner.co.uk). Don't forget to subscribe for more fun CAT activities!
Created by Ian Grundy © September 2020
Creative Arts Used: Art
Psychological Areas Explored: Resilience, Emotional Wellbeing, Self-Exploration
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These activities could be done by children of all ages, but some may need the support of their parent or carer to read the instructions or complete the activity safely.
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