Children who’ve been in school classrooms may have used something similar to our Grief Chart, teachers might use it to gauge how the class is feeling or how hard the pupils have been working.

Creating a Grief Chart allows you, as the adult supporting the child, to start a conversation about emotions by talking about the chart rather than the child. Often, children can find it difficult to talk about their feelings but if you can attach the conversation to an activity or item, they might be more willing to chat.

Alongside the Grief Chart, you can also make a Coping Wheel – this is something you can use to suggest ways to express the child’s emotions or grief if they find it helpful.

Make a Grief Chart

You will need:

• Paper
• Pens/Pencils
• Scissors (and a helpful grown up!)
• Blu tack (or similar)
• Split pin or paper clip

How to make a Grief Chart

To make your own Grief Chart, start by talking about emotions in general and select a few key feelings (you can always add more!). You can print out images of emojis, or simply draw shapes and colour them to represent the emotions you’ve chosen. Next, cut out your shapes so they can move around.

Here’s an example:

1. On a sheet of paper, draw out a vertical line on one side (like a height chart!), and mark out evenly spaced notches and numbers from 0 to 10. This is where the child will rate their emotions. Draw a box above or below the chart where the emotions can sit while they’re not in use – a bit like a car park!

2. Attach small pieces of Blu Tack or similar reusable adhesive to the back of them. Now you can start by ‘parking the emotions’ and then adding emotions to the chart as and when the child feels a different way.

It’s important to note that grief can sometimes feel like a big mix of emotions, or it can sometimes feel empty of emotion, similar to feeling of numb. It’s completely valid if the child cannot pinpoint their emotions at any given time, and equally normal if they choose to put every emotion at a level 10.

Alongside your Grief Chart, there’s the option of adding a Coping Wheel. The wheel will offer ways to express emotions and can be used on its own or with the chart.

Here’s an example:

1. Take two pieces of paper, draw a big circle on each and cut them out. Next, cut a pizza slice shape out of one of the circles, then draw pizza slice sections on the full circle.

Your pizza slice circle is going to be the top layer. Decorate this however you like and write ‘Coping Wheel’ if you want to.

2. Take the full circle (with pizza slice lines on it) and write some ways to express grief on each pizza section. For example: write a letter, listen to music, look at photos, go outside, talk about memories, hug it out. These are just ideas, but you can write whatever you think would suit the child you’re supporting.

3. Place the Coping Wheel (with a missing slice) on top of your full circle with ideas on. If you have a split pin, poke it through the centre of both circles and fold it flat on the back to attach the two circles. If you have a paper clip, make a small cut with scissors through the centre of both circles and slide a paper clip from the centre across the two layers of circles – see photo for visual explanation!

4. Now you should be able to spin your top circle and choose the idea you’d like to try to help the child express their grief and emotions.

Getting grief support

Winston’s Wish provides immediate bereavement support by phone, email, and live chat. Don’t wait to get onto a counselling list, speak to one of our team on weekdays from 8am to 8pm for free.

You can call our Freephone Helpline on 08088 020 021, email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org or use our live chat. Our support workers are here to listen, can offer immediate guidance and resources and tell you what support we can offer and what might be most suitable for you.

Our Winston’s Wish Crisis Messenger is available 24/7 for urgent support in a crisis. Text WW to 85258.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Make and talk activity: Rainbow Review

Use our free make and talk activity as a handy check-in check-in for children to find out a bit more about how they’re coping at the moment by asking about the good and not so good parts of their day or week.

Some children and young people find it more difficult to open up about their feelings and talk about their grief, and that’s completely normal. Our ‘Make and Talk’ activities are designed to help grown-ups supporting these children and young people and provide a way to talk about feelings and emotions while getting crafty.

How our Window Art activity can help a grieving child

This activity also involves reflection and thinking about the person who’s died. If you start the activity and the child is distressed or uncomfortable, you could try one of our other activities instead and revisit this at a later date.

If you’d like to talk to one of our Support Workers about this activity or the child or young person you’re supporting, we’re here to listen. Our on-demand services are open on weekdays, and you can find out how to contact us at the bottom of this page.

Creating window art is a fun, simple way to interact with the child while they’re busy getting hands on with the craft. You can then display their art in the window, which is great if you don’t want to stick things on your walls!

Make Window Art

You will need:

• Greaseproof or baking paper (preferably white so more light can get through!)
• Coloured tissue paper
• PVA glue or glue stick
• Scissors (for grown-ups only!)
• Lollipop sticks or similar (optional)
• Paper or notebook
• Pencil

How to make Window Art

1. Start by cutting your greaseproof paper into a shape or the size you want it to be. You could do a square, circle, heart shape… When using scissors, make sure a grown-up is there to help you.

2. Lay out your coloured tissue paper. If you have lots of different colours, you could start to select which you’d like to use and why. Different colours might represent something about the person who died, for example their hair colour, eye colour, favourite t-shirt, the colour of their car, or something they loved… like yellow sunshine or red strawberries. Take your time choosing these colours, this is a really important part of the activity.

3. Take the pencil and paper and create a colour code to remind you of your choices for your piece of art. For example, Green = they loved the park.

4. You can either rip the tissue paper into small pieces or ask a grown-up to help you cut it into shapes and small pieces.

5. Now you can create your collage! Ask a grown-up to help you use some glue to stick the tissue paper pieces to the greaseproof paper. You might decide to make shapes within your art, like a heart or smiley face, or you could create a mosaic collage.

6. Wait for all the bits of glue to dry – this might take a little bit of time – then you can tape your art to the window to let the sunlight shine through it! If you have lollipop sticks, you could create a frame for the edge of your art.

Every time the sun shines through you can remember all those details about your person by looking at the different colours you’ve chosen or the shape of your design. You can keep your colour code in your memory box or somewhere safe to remind you as well.

Getting grief support

If you’re a young person who is struggling with their grief or you are an adult who would like help to support a child or young person after the death of someone, Winston’s Wish are here to help. Winston’s Wish provides support for children, young people up to the age of 25 and adults supporting them.

You can call our Freephone Helpline on 08088 020 021 (8am-8pm, Monday to Friday), email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org or use our live chat (open 8am-8pm, Monday to Friday). Our support workers are here to listen, can offer immediate guidance and resources and tell you what support we can offer and what might be most suitable for you.

For out of hours mental help support, text WW to 85258 to speak with someone from our trusted partner, Shout. For urgent support in a crisis, please call 999.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Make and talk activity: Thankful Tree

Use our free make and talk activity to help children stop feeling overwhelmed by grief and think about the things that are good in their life by making a Thankful Tree.

Have you heard of mindful colouring? Colouring in shapes and pictures can be really calming and help to clear your mind. This can be really helpful if you are struggling with your grief and emotions. Have you tried it before?

What is being mindful?

Being mindful is a way of trying to be present in the moment, which can calm your busy brain and give you the chance to focus on what you’re doing in front of you. Sometimes it’s really helpful to not think about anything else for a few minutes and get absorbed in the activity or thing you’re doing. In this case, the activity of mindfulness is colouring.

How do I do it?

To be able to start mindful colouring, you’ll need to find a picture you like and be sitting somewhere quiet or where you can concentrate on what you’re doing. This activity is something you could do with others, or it might be an opportunity to have some time on your own and really focus on being present in the moment. Watching yourself colour in the different shapes to your own chosen design can be really satisfying, and you might even want to challenge yourself to stay within the lines!

What do I need?

If you can print the picture onto paper, you’ll need some colouring pens, pencils, or any other arty supplies. If you are colouring digitally, you or a grown-up will need to save the image to a device and download an app called Colorscape to colour it in!

We’ve put together some printable PDFs and digital downloads (use the app Colorscape to colour in on your device!) of single colouring pages. Mindful colouring books are increasingly popular among all ages, but sometimes having a whole book can feel overwhelming. There are lots of designs so hopefully you can find one suitable for your age and your personal interests.

Try this activity and take some time out of your day, even if it’s five minutes a day for five days. If you choose one of the harder designs that are more repetitive and smaller shapes, you could try following a colouring pattern to focus on what you’re doing. Being mindful is a type of self-care and can be a great way to ground yourself – see if it helps you take your mind away from your busy thoughts and grief.

Download our mindful colouring activity

Below you can see the different images we have created. Some are simpler designs than others! Choose the one you like and click on the button to download it either as a PDF or an image.

Getting grief support

If you’re a young person who is struggling with their grief or you are an adult who would like help to support a child or young person after the death of someone, Winston’s Wish are here to help. Winston’s Wish provides support for children, young people up to the age of 25 and adults supporting them.

You can call our Freephone Helpline on 08088 020 021 (8am-8pm, Monday to Friday), email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org or use our live chat (open 8am-8pm, Monday to Friday). Our support workers are here to listen, can offer immediate guidance and resources and tell you what support we can offer and what might be most suitable for you.

For out of hours mental help support, text WW to 85258 to speak with someone from our trusted partner, Shout. For urgent support in a crisis, please call 999.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Make and talk activity: Rainbow Review

A handy check-in to find out how grieving children and young people are coping at the moment by asking them about the good, not so good and stand-out moments from their day or week.

Rainbow Review is an activity that can be used as a handy check-in for children to find out a bit more about how they’re coping at the moment by asking about the good and not so good parts of their day or week. You can do this as a parent, carer, teacher, or any other supporting adult, to ask them how they’re feeling that day or week.

A child who is grieving may not be experiencing emotions in the same way as a child who isn’t grieving. You may be surprised by their answers to this check-in activity, and their stand-out moments from the day or week might not be exactly what you expected.

It’s important to listen to the child, you can also ask them questions about their answers to try and work out why these moments stood out to them. If you need any advice or help in talking to the child about their grief and emotions, Winston’s Wish is here to support you and listen.

Make a Rainbow Review

You will need:

• A sheet of paper
• Pencils
• Ruler (or a steady hand!)
• Coloured pencils or pens

How to make a Rainbow Review

1. Take the sheet of paper and divide it into six sections using a pencil and ruler (or a steady hand!).

2. With the paper in portrait orientation, ask the child to draw a sun, rain cloud, and rainbow in each of the three boxes on the left side.

3. In the boxes opposite those drawings (on the right), you can ask the questions below and the child or you can write in their answers.

Junior Youth Team examples

Our Junior Youth Team members have been getting involved in the Rainbow Review activity, sharing their thoughts and feelings through their art.

In Annabel’s Rainbow Review, she added a sun behind a cloud to depict her silver-lining moment, where she found a positive in something that may otherwise been a negative. For her that was having rainbow crutches to use after she broke her leg!

Questions to ask the child

For this activity, we’ve selected three simple associations with different moods or feelings: sun, rain, and rainbow. You could add more and create a whole array of weather or nature themes to match up emotions to.

Ask the child how their day or week has been using the associations of sun, rain, and a rainbow to determine their good, bad, and brilliant moments…

1. What was your sunny moment?

Something the child enjoyed. This could be a happy moment, an achievement, or a time when they felt relaxed.

2. What was your rainy moment?

Something that was a challenge or disappointment. This could be a moment where something didn’t go quite as planned, or the child felt sad or uncomfortable about something.

3. What was your rainbow moment?

Something that was surprising or unexpectedly brilliant. This could be something the child did that they thought was their highlight, or something they found out that they’re now looking forward to.

This exercise can be repeated each day for a week, or once a week for a month… Or for as long as you like. It can be useful for children to reflect on how they’ve felt, and for the adult supporting them to have a useful tool to check in with them regularly or when you feel it’s suitable.

You may find that using the same associations of the sun, rain cloud, and rainbow becomes repetitive. You could use something else, like emoji faces, colours, animals… Get creative and ask the child to think of their own ideas too!

Rainbow breathing exercise

When you have completed the Rainbow Review activity, you could try the following breathing exercise with them.

Start at one side of the red band on the rainbow and trace the curve while breathing in until you reach the other side. Trace back along the red band again while breathing out. Repeat this for each coloured band of the rainbow. Sometimes breathing techniques can help to ground us and stabilise our emotions. This part may not only be helpful for the child, but also yourself!

Getting grief support

If you’re a young person who is struggling with their grief or you are an adult who would like help to support a child or young person after the death of someone, Winston’s Wish are here to help. Winston’s Wish provides support for children, young people up to the age of 25 and adults supporting them.

You can call our Freephone Helpline on 08088 020 021 (8am-8pm, Monday to Friday), email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org or use our live chat (open 8am-8pm, Monday to Friday). Our support workers are here to listen, can offer immediate guidance and resources and tell you what support we can offer and what might be most suitable for you.

For out of hours mental help support, text WW to 85258 to speak with someone from our trusted partner, Shout. For urgent support in a crisis, please call 999.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Make and talk activity: Thankful Tree

Use our free make and talk activity to help children stop feeling overwhelmed by grief and think about the things that are good in their life by making a Thankful Tree.

Grief can be overwhelming for children (and adults) with lots of different emotions and questions swirling around their head. The Thankful Tree is an activity that allows children a moment to take a step back from all those overwhelming emotions and focus on the things they currently have in their life that they are thankful for, or that make them feel good.

How our Thankful Tree activity can help a grieving child

Feeling good and talking about things that they feel happy about doesn’t erase the child’s other emotions, but it could allow them some breathing room and give them something to work on to take their mind off their situation. Having a completed tree to look at when they are having a bad day can also help the child, as it can give them ideas as to what they might like to do to help themselves feel better.

All children are different, some may jump at the opportunity to talk about things they are thankful for, and others may find this more difficult if they’re not feeling like it that day.

Puddle jumping is an analogy often used to describe how children jump in and out of their emotions when they’re grieving. It may be that one minute they are crying and feel all consumed by their sadness, but a minute later they may be ready to play a game as a welcome distraction. The emotions children feel in grief have no set time limit, order they’ll come up in, or expiry dates, so their reaction over time is not something we can predict.

If the child asks you some questions or brings up big emotions during this make and talk activity, it’s okay to let them know you aren’t sure what to say right now but you will come back to that question or topic later. It is really important that you do come back to them when you’ve had a chance to process and find an answer, this will enable the child to trust you should they need to speak with you again about their grief. Winston’s Wish can help with those tricky questions or unexpected topics, and you can call us on 08088 020 021.

Make a Thankful Tree

You will need:

• 3 sheets of A4 paper
• Pens or pencils
• Scissors
• Glue
• Tape
• Help from a grown-up!

How to make a Thankful Tree

1. Tape 2 sheets of A4 paper together to make an A3 size.

2. Draw out the outline of a tree trunk in the centre of the pages.

3. Draw some branches coming out of the top of the tree trunk – as many as you like!

4. Take your third A4 sheet of paper and ask a grown-up to cut out some leaf shapes for you. If you have any green paper, you could use that, if not you could colour them in using a light green coloured pencil or pen.

5. You’re ready to write! Grab a pen or pencil! On each leaf, you can write something you’re thankful for or that makes you feel good: a person’s name; your teddy or toy’s name; your favourite song, TV show, food or drink; anything that makes you feel good and you’re grateful for right now. You can draw and write on as many leaves as you like.

6. When you’ve written on your leaves, you can glue them (with a grown-up) to the end of each branch. If you have more leaves than branches, you can stick the other leaves over the top of the branches! When your tree is finished, you can display it somewhere so you can revisit it whenever you like.

Getting grief support

Our bereavement support workers are available to offer information, guidance and support, right away. Reach out on 08088 020 021 or use our live chat (click the blue ‘chat’ button on the bottom right of your screen) between 8am and 8pm, Monday to Friday. You can also email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org and we’ll get back to you within two working days.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Make and talk activity: Straw Rockets

Use our free make and talk activity to make straw rockets while talking to children about their feelings about grief.

Christmas time can be really difficult for grieving children and families. Whether it’s been a few months or several years, we know grief isn’t a step-by-step process and no two people have the same experience. Lots of things might change, but it’s important to try and make some new traditions. Perhaps one of them could be playing a game or creating something together – like our Christmas activity, Snowman Strike.

This Christmas, we hope you can find little moments of joy amidst your grief, so here is a make and talk activity we hope will be a distraction, even if it’s only temporary.

Once the Snowman Strike activity has been made with the help of a grown-up, a child or children can play the game by themselves. They could create a competition to play against others or keep a scoreboard by themselves. You could add numbers to each snowman to make the scoring system even more tactical if you like!

Make Snowman Strike for Christmas

You will need:

• Toilet roll tubes or pieces of card
• Pens or pencils
• A ball
• Any other arts and crafts materials (optional)

How to make Snowman Strike

1. Take your toilet roll tubes or pieces of card (an adult can roll the card into tube shapes like a toilet roll tube and tape them together for you!) and paint or colour them in white if they aren’t already. Ideally, you’ll need at least three, but you can make as many as you’d like if you have lots of these materials lying around.

2. The child can then colour or paint the snowman’s face onto the tube. You can add any craft materials at this stage – go as creative as you’d like! You could add a paper scarf, stick a curved piece of paper over the top and add pompoms to look like earmuffs…

3. Line your snowmen up just like you might have seen skittles lined up if you’ve been bowling or played a similar game before. Make sure you’ve got enough space to bowl a ball at them…

4. Take your ball and have a go! See how many you can knock down.

You might like to add a scoring system to each snowman. You could then play more tactically and try to always knock down the one with the highest points! Maybe you could play this game over the Christmas period with anyone who’s visiting, or you can compete with yourself and make a note of your high score each time you play!

We hope this game can bring a moment of joy to your household. If you complete this activity, please tag us in your photos on social media – we’d love to see your snowmen! Just search for Winston’s Wish.

Getting grief support

Our bereavement support workers are available to offer information, guidance and support, right away. Reach out on 08088 020 021 or use our live chat (click the blue ‘chat’ button on the bottom right of your screen) between 8am and 8pm, Monday to Friday. You can also email us on ask@staging.winstonswish.org and we’ll get back to you within two working days.

For out of hours mental help support, text WW to 85258 to speak with someone from our trusted partner, Shout. For urgent support in a crisis, please call 999.

You may also like

Activities for grieving children

Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.

Coping with grief at Christmas

Advice from our practitioners on ways to cope at Christmas and ideas to remember someone during the festive period.