Discovering and experiencing feelings with Stabil im Kopf

This summer, the Summer City Camps took place in Vienna once again – a leisure-time educational childcare programme available at low cost for all children between 6 and 14 throughout the summer holidays. We were also there again with workshops and invited children to discover their feelings through play, to understand them better, and to express them.

In total, 14 workshops for up to 300 children took place over three summer holiday weeks at three locations. We developed two different workshop concepts tailored to the children's ages: one for younger children and mixed groups, and one for slightly older children from the 3rd grade onwards.

Six feelings, many forms of expression

At the centre of all the workshops were six feelings: joy, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and boredom. We based this on the basic emotions, including the feeling of boredom, which many children and young people know well, especially during the nine weeks of summer holidays.

The children learned to name and recognise the feelings: What does joy look like? How can we recognise anger? How do our posture and facial expressions change when we are sad or surprised?

And it wasn't just about talking. Playful exercises, movement, and different forms of expression helped the children experience the feelings directly and perceive them in themselves and others.

An important principle accompanied us throughout:

Feelings are individual. There is no right or wrong.

What triggers joy in one child can have a completely different effect on another. And feelings like anger, fear, or sadness are allowed to be there too.

Understanding feelings and dealing with them

The younger children engaged more intensively with joy, anger, sadness, and fear. They thought about and depicted which situations trigger these feelings in them. In a protected setting, they were able to share their thoughts with the group and reflect together.

The children also got to know playful strategies that can help them deal with particularly intense feelings and calm down again. In this way, emotional self-awareness became tangible in a very practical way.

For the older children, the feeling of anger was at the centre of the second session. Together we explored the questions: Where does anger actually come from? What does it feel like in the body? And what can help me when the anger gets very big?

At the end, all the children developed their own personal “first aid for anger” – as a little reminder of which strategies can help them calm down again in their everyday lives.

Learning what happens inside yourself

Our workshops at the Summer City Camps combine knowledge transfer with movement, creativity, and play. Because emotional skills arise not only through explanation, but above all through children being able to try things out, observe, name, and reflect for themselves.

Whether joy, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, or boredom:

All feelings belong.

The earlier children learn to perceive and express them, the better they can understand what is going on inside themselves and in others. In this way, we also pursue our goal of making psychoeducation accessible and tangible for as many children and young people as possible.

We look forward to being part of the Summer City Camps in Vienna again next summer and going on a journey of feelings together with the children!