Kid Talk A Faith Based Curriculum For Grieving Children

Do you have a grieving child in your life? Are you a caring adult wanting to help? Are you looking for healing activities and the language to use to explain them? Bundled together, KID TALK and OUR STORY give you over 100 creative activities and games, including the memory book, lesson plans, supplementary materials, and additional resources. Used in public schools and hospice settings over 20 years, the curriculum was recently expanded to be faith-based for use in a church setting with the goal of helping a child know God better and trust Him more. The format and content are proven successful. With KID TALK and OUR STORY, you can create interactive sessions with confidence that you are using time-tested exercises that work for the setting and profile of your child or children. Directions explain each activity with kid-friendly words. You will be able to help a child (or children) better understand and process his or her grief, diminish fear of grief itself, and normalize the grieving process. You will have multiple ways for the child to express his or her love for the decedent: memorialize. The pages in Our Story can inspire family conversations and doing griefwork together. The memory book can be a healing tool for the child to return to when his or her grief recycles in adolescence. Two books for the price of one. Purchase of the book entitles you to 25 exclusive downloadable PDFs at www.kidtalkgrief.com. These books are what you need to meet a grieving child's need for comfort, understanding and support.

Based on Alan Wolfelt’s six needs of mourning and written to pair with Companioning the Grieving Child, this thorough guide provides hundreds of hands-on activities tailored for grieving children in three age groups: preschool, elementary, and teens. Through the use of readings, games, discussion questions, and arts and crafts, caregivers can help grieving young people acknowledge the reality of the death, embrace the pain of the loss, remember the person who died, develop a new self-identity, search for meaning, and accept support. Sample activities include grief sock puppets, expression bead bracelets, the nurturing game, and writing an autobiographical poem. Activities are presented in an easy-to-follow format, and each has a goal, an objective, a sequential description of the activity, and a list of needed materials.

Do you want to help a grieving child? OUR STORY: A MEMORY BOOK for _____ is 38 pages of exercises designed to enable a child to navigate their grief, tell their story, and better understand and express their grief. It is an interactive tool you can use to help a child learn, heal, and grow. As you do griefwork together, you are building a healing relationship that moves the child through the grieving process. Each page can become a springboard for conversation, promoting griefwork as a family around topics like 'Favorite Things,' 'An Acrostic for ____,' 'Toilet Bowl Love,' and 'Treasured Memories.' Pages like 'My Silent Hurting Heart,' 'My Grief Bundle,' 'The Behaviors of Grief,' and 'How My Family Has Changed' increase understanding of the grief experience. Detailed instructions for each page of OUR STORY are found in Kid Talk A FAITH-BASED CURRICULUM FOR GRIEVING CHILDREN. For this reason, the two companion books are printed as one. Kid friendly language you can quote introduces over 60 more games and activities in the Kid Talk curriculum. They tip the balance of griefwork towards 'fun.' (Examples are popping corn without a lid when talking about anger, making 'pop-up puppets' who talk for you, the 'feelings vase magic,' blowing 'love bubbles,' and 'Kid Talk Jenga.' With a completed OUR STORY memory book, a child no longer needs to worry about forgetting the person who died. The memory book can also be an invaluable support when grief recycles in later years. And it will, especially in adolescence. It will enable the child to do griefwork in the future by reconnecting with once-fresh feelings, memories, and perspective of their loss. It will continue to inspire healing conversations with family that are mutually beneficial griefwork. Griefwork heals. For your convenience, the OUR STORY MEMORY BOOK can also be purchased separately if you are working with more than one child.

One out of seven children will lose a parent before they are 20. The statistics are sobering, but they are also a call for preparedness. However, pastors and counselors of all types are often at a loss when dealing with a grieving child. Talking to adults about death and grief is difficult; it's all the more challenging to talk to children and teens. The stakes are high: grieving children are high-risk for substance abuse, promiscuity, depression, isolation, and suicide. Yet, despite this, most of these kids grow up to be normal or exceptional adults. But their chance to become healthy adults increases with the support of a loving community. Supporting grieving children requires intentionality, open communication, and patience. Rather than avoid all conversations on death or pretend like it never happened, normalizing grief and offering support requires us to be in-tune with kids through dialogue as they grapple with questions of “how” and “why.” When listening to children in grief, we often have to embrace the mystery, offer love and compassion, and stick with the basics. The author says, "We don’t have to answer the why and how for them, but we can assure our children that God is with us as we suffer. We can do so by doing good for others and pointing out all of those moments when someone has done something good for us. I believe that most of the time that’s as far as we will get, and that is okay."

Contains lesson plans for 10 sessions that include age-appropriate activities. These fun and engaging activities enable young children to approach highly sensitive and painful topics.

What do you say to a grieving child? How do you break tragic news? How can you help? These questions plague caring adults as more children are left behind by the pandemic. Unresolved childhood grief is a critical issue having lifelong impact on a child. It can interfere with school performance, relationships, and wellbeing causing acting out, depression, risk taking behaviors and suicide. As a certified grief specialist with over 30 years of experience working with bereaved children, the author shares her story, her faith, and valuable insights supported by actionable tips and tools. This little book is designed to give you the answers you seek and the language you need so that you can be the healing support that your child needs. You will learn:Four simple steps for you to break tragic news to a child.How your child grieves differently than you do. When your child may need a professional evaluation. Kid friendly language you can use to explain hard topics.Creative and healing activities you can easily do at home.Coping tools that you can apply in future challenges. Books and website resources for when you want to learn more. Mr. Rogers said, "Making difficult matters mentionable is the best way to make them manageable." You can do this. This book is a great starting place.

Contains lesson plans for 10 sessions that include age-appropriate activities. These fun and engaging activities enable young children to approach highly sensitive and painful topics.

Emily was oh so very happy! She loved school. She loved her pup. And she especially loved her family! But one day the very worst thing happened. Emily lost someone she loved. And after that nothing felt the same.From debut author Kathleen Fucci comes a story about adorable, vivacious Emily and a loss so big it threatens everything she knows. But one night when Emily cries out, "Where is God?!" she learns He is much closer, and loves her so much more, than she ever realized. Emily Lost Someone She Loved is a story written from personal experience. It communicates real emotions children feel when they lose a loved one. It's a book that can be read over and over again, restoring faith in God and hope for the future.

When your child faces the loss of someone close, their world no longer feels safe. Grief and its aftermath take us all by surprise, but even more so children, who don’t have the words or tools to face grief and can respond with fear, withdrawal, and other behaviors. How do you help your child with their fear and sadness, especially if you are ...

Henry the dog explains how he felt after his grandfather died, and how the children who make up his family felt and worked through their feelings of grief; includes a "memory book" for young readers who have lost someone.