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Forest of feelings trail

Follow a trail through a magical forest, to find animals and explore different feelings.

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You’ll need

  • Printed woodland animal signs
  • Cones or tape to mark a trail
  • Device to play music (optional)
  • Emotion/feeling cards (optional)
Woodland animal signs
PDF – 1023.8KB
Download Woodland animal signs

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.  
  • Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help. 
  • Discussions about feelings can sometimes lead to disclosures of harm. Always follow the Safeguarding Code of Conduct (Yellow Card) and report any concerns to the UK HQ Safeguarding Team.

Mental health and wellbeing research

This activity is part of our mental health and wellbeing research. 

Please make sure you've got consent from the parents or carers of all young people taking part, using the Participant Information Sheet and Consent Form you’ve been given.

When you've completed the activity, please share your feedback on the activities using this form.

Submit your feedback

Planning and setting up this activity 

  • Print out the woodland animal signs. There are eight signs, each showing an animal expressing a different emotion (happy fox, sad hedgehog, worried owl, tired badger, proud deer, excited squirrel, surprised otter, and angry rabbit).
  • Create a simple trail around your meeting space, by marking a path using cones or tape. Then, place the signs along the trail for young people to find.  If you have access to an outdoor space with trees, this activity would work especially well there.
  • You could find some soft background nature sounds to play, to set the scene. 

Running this activity

  1. Gather everyone together and explain they’ll be following a path through a magical forest, to see what animals they can find. They should follow the trail and try to spot the pictures of animals along the way. 
  2. Explain that each animal is showing a different feeling – like happy, excited, sad or worried. At each sign, they can name the feeling and make a face showing it or act it out themselves. Some people show feelings differently and that’s okay.
  3. You could split everyone into pairs or small groups to follow the trail.
  4. Go on the trail, encouraging imagination and movement along the way. People could tiptoe, hop or even move like different animals.
  5. When everyone’s completed the trail, talk about the different animals and feelings they found. For example, when might someone feel like the hedgehog (sad) or fox (happy)? You could ask everyone if they can think of any other feelings, too.  
  6. Invite everyone to share how they’re feeling themselves, if they want to. You could use the woodland animal signs and people could point or move to the animal they feel most like. You could also use emotion/feeling cards. 

Reflection

This activity was all about recognising and understanding feelings – in ourselves and in others. It shows that everyone has feelings, and that it's normal to feel different emotions. 

We practised naming feelings and showing them with our faces and bodies.  Did everyone look the same or different when they were doing this?  We saw that everyone shows feelings in their own way, and that’s okay. 

We also listened to each other and shared how we were feeling. People might have felt like different animals, with different feelings. It’s normal to feel different feelings, and talking about feelings helps us understand ourselves and our friends better, and helps us be kind to ourselves and each other. 

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

You must run your activities in line with the Safeguarding Code of Conduct for Adults (Yellow Card) and report any concerns to the UK HQ Safeguarding Team.

Outdoor activities

You must have permission to use the location. Always check the weather forecast, and inform parents and carers of any change in venue.

  • To make this activity easier, you could use a smaller number of signs, with fewer different feelings to explore.  
  • To make this activity harder, you could turn it into a team challenge. Split everyone into smaller groups that go on different ‘trails’ and find different animals. They then collect the animals and tell the group what animals they found and what feeling they showed. 
  • You could also cut out the words which have the emotions on them and ask young people to match the emotions with the pictures. Remember that different people will view different emotions for each animal, and there’s no right or wrong answer. 
  • Make sure that the trail is accessible for everyone, including those using wheelchairs or mobility aids. Make sure the signs are placed where everyone will be able to see or reach.  
  • For anyone with sight loss, use flat markers (such as chalk or tape) instead of cones or ropes to reduce trip hazards. Make sure to choose colours that are easy to identify for anyone who’s colourblind. 
  • People could use hand gestures instead of full body movement or describe in words, rather than acting. 
  • If someone finds it hard to communicate verbally, you could use emotion cards for them to match with the animal emotions, and to share how they’re feeling.  

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Squirrels Feel Good Activity Badge

If you enjoyed this activity, you could let the young people invent a new animal feeling sign, showing a new feeling and add it to the trail. 

Young people could work in groups, to set up their own trail for another group to follow.