Creative activities for kids that develop social-emotional skills

Behind every difficult behavior is often an overwhelmed child. We bridge that gap through a comprehensive approach:

• Free Printable Resources: Practical, bear-themed social stories for high-need areas like personal space and asking for help.
• The "Catbears Felt" Digital Tool: A unique platform (catbears.com/felt) where kids express their internal world through digital play.
• Collaborative Learning: Online courses and crafts where children practice real-world skills—like turn-taking and negotiation—while they create together.

In every Catbears project, children learn that mistakes are just problems looking for solutions. We make the "hard stuff" of social interaction tactile, engaging, and safe.

Catbears operates on two complementary levels: an educational field workshop and a digital initiative.

The Catbears workshop, approved under Gaf"n program number 45381, operates in kindergartens and elementary schools and serves as a precise pedagogical laboratory. There, each activity is tested with real children: difficulty level, guidance, frustrations, how children cooperate, and whether the emotional skill is actually transmitted and absorbed.

In parallel, the team collects feedback from parents and children creating from home, conducts usability tests and in-depth interviews, and fine-tunes the digital creative experience to be clear, feasible, and well-guided.

Based on all this, activities are built by an experienced product team that ensures children succeed in completing tasks, understanding emotional tools, and applying them.

The goal is to achieve a creation that children are proud of, together with a process that generates change in behavioral habits, so that from activity to activity we see real and meaningful progress in exactly the places that are usually hardest to teach: children will cooperate better, cope differently with frustration, listen, wait, and talk - this is the essence of Catbears.

The principle of Catbears is to leverage the natural moments of frustration that arise during creation as a perfect environment for social-emotional learning. In each activity, children learn a different skill such as how to take a breath to calm anger, how to help a friend, and how to accept differences.

Gradually, children identify emotions in real-time, manage to stop before outbursts, and improve their coping with conflicts from daily life.

The emotional model works on breaking the automatic response by training the brain to stop the emotional reaction and choose a conscious response. Repeated practice of "stop-breathe-think" turns this response into an automatic habit, essential for emotional regulation and conflict resolution in real life.

Parents and educators report that children begin to use breathing tools even outside the activity, when there is difficulty or frustration in daily life.

At home: Catbears activities encourage cooperation between siblings by forcing them to work together on a shared project. Parents are "freed" from endless searching for easy craft ideas for children, and enable immediate activation with minimal preparation. The activities are especially suitable for rainy days or holidays, when parents are looking for meaningful activity that encourages cooperation instead of arguments. Children stay engaged and focused, and the final product gives a sense of achievement and pride.

In educational institutions: Catbears activities were developed to address common emotional and social difficulties among children, including emotional restlessness, regulation difficulties, challenging social dynamics, and feelings of loneliness. The structured format of activities combined with guided video makes them an ideal tool for educators and therapists, such as speech therapists and art therapists, as well as for kindergarten teachers, teachers, and after-school program leaders.

The activities are adapted for small groups of up to six children, and are successfully run in kindergartens, elementary schools, communication kindergartens, after-school programs, community centers, and emergency settings. The clear structure and guided pace also allow children with emotional or social difficulties to integrate safely and experientially.

Catbears shifts the focus from the adult to the children. The child learns to cope with conflicts from self-awareness of their emotions, which frees them from the need to use an adult as an arbitrator. The characters (the Cat and the Bear) serve as a model for accepting opposites and inclusion - "even a bear and a cat can be friends!". Children learn that the power to resolve the conflict lies within the child themselves.

The course creates situations where children must work together, for example, waiting for everyone to finish a stage before progressing, or helping a friend who encounters difficulty. Repeated practice of cooperation turns these skills into second nature.

Children practice practical skills: asking for help, giving help, waiting for turns, and using calming strategies when frustrated. "Team steps" create short, fun interactions that turn friction into learning.

The system comes with activity pages and short videos that guide step by step. The equipment includes safety scissors, glue sticks, thin cardboard (like a cereal box), tape, and colors/markers/watercolors. All materials are safe for children - no need for hot glue or sharp tools.

We use only available and child-safe materials: paper, thin cardboard, tape, glue sticks, colors/markers, yarn, and rounded scissors.

The adult simply activates the video and ensures the basic tools are available. During the lesson, the course itself takes command of the pace of progress, while children help each other and develop social skills.