The School of Play Curriculum
Kindergarten
Week Twelve supports students in exploring peaceful ways to manage conflict, big feelings, and everyday challenges through calm, creative, and reflective activities. Students begin with Peace Pals, a simple and supportive role-play experience where they practise using kind words and calm solutions to solve small problems, helping them understand that disagreements can be worked through gently. They then move into Conflict Cool-Down Posters, creating drawings or reminders of the strategies that help them feel calm when things go wrong, building emotional awareness and personalised regulation tools they can use throughout the year.
The week continues with Freeze and Think, a movement-based mindfulness game that teaches students the power of pausing, breathing, and choosing calm actions even during moments of excitement. The week concludes with Peace Pebbles, a touching, creative activity where students decorate a pebble with peaceful colours and gift it to someone, reinforcing the idea that kindness and generosity can bring harmony to relationships. Together, these activities help children understand that, just like Mercury, a planet of extremes, balance, calm choices, and compassion, can help them navigate strong emotions. Week Twelve strengthens empathy, emotional regulation, kindness, and problem-solving, giving students lifelong tools for creating peace within themselves and their community.
Weekly Lessons
Peace Pals
Peace Pals is a gentle and playful role-play activity where students practise using kind words to solve small disagreements. Just like Mercury’s extreme hot and cold temperatures, our feelings can sometimes be big and confusing during a conflict, but Peace Pals teaches students how to find balance through calm voices, turn-taking, and empathy. By acting out simple, familiar scenarios, students learn that even tricky moments can be handled with kindness and understanding.
Working in pairs, students explore friendly solutions such as sharing, apologising, or taking turns, building confidence as they use their words to fix the problem. Laughter, teamwork, and creativity turn each scenario into a powerful learning moment. This activity helps students realise that everyone has the ability to solve problems peacefully, and when we do, our classroom becomes a safer, kinder, more connected place for all.
Conflict Cool-Down Posters
Conflict Cool-Down Posters invites students to explore what helps them feel calm when emotions run high. Using creativity and self-reflection, students draw or write their own calming strategies, like taking deep breaths, finding a quiet space, or asking for help, turning their ideas into bright, personal posters. This gentle activity teaches students that feelings can be “hot” or “cold,” just like the extremes on Mercury, and that everyone has unique ways to cool down and feel steady again.
Once their posters are complete, students share their calming ideas with the group, learning new strategies from one another and building a shared toolkit for peaceful problem-solving. By displaying their posters in a Cool-Down Corner, students are reminded that they have the power to regulate their feelings and respond kindly during conflict. Conflict Cool-Down Posters helps create a calmer, more understanding classroom where students feel supported, safe, and emotionally confident.
Freeze and Think
Freeze and Think is a lively movement game that teaches students how to pause, breathe, and choose calm during moments of big energy. Students dance freely while the music plays, expressing their creativity through movement. But when the music stops, they freeze and practise a calming action, like taking a deep breath, hugging themselves, or stretching slowly to the sky. This playful switch from high energy to calm focus helps students understand how to steady their bodies and minds, just like Mercury teaches us to balance hot and cold feelings.
After the fun, students reflect on which calming actions helped them feel most settled and how they could use those same strategies during real moments of frustration or conflict. Freeze and Think strengthens self-regulation, emotional awareness, and intentional decision-making, all while keeping the classroom filled with laughter and movement. It’s a simple, joyful way to help students learn that they have the power to stop, breathe, and choose peace.
Peace Pebbles
Peace Pebbles is a gentle, creative activity that helps students explore how small acts of kindness can bring calm, connection, and peace to their world. Inspired by Mercury’s lesson about balancing big emotions, students decorate a smooth pebble using colours and symbols that make them feel relaxed, grateful, or happy. Each student chooses someone special to gift their Peace Pebble to, a friend, a family member, a teacher, or even someone they’ve had a disagreement with, turning their artwork into a meaningful gesture of care and gratitude.
After creating their pebble, students reflect on how giving can soothe conflict, strengthen relationships, and make others feel valued. Peace Pebbles encourages generosity, emotional awareness, and creative self-expression, while reminding students that peaceful actions don’t have to be big to make a difference. It’s a beautiful, calming way to help students understand that kindness is something we can choose, create, and share, one pebble at a time.
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