This is a data visualisation feelings tracking activity that combines creativity, emotional awareness, and data collection in a unique and engaging activity for primary school students.
Over five weeks, students will track their daily emotions using embroidery to create a vibrant, data-driven art piece. Each day, they’ll select a thread colour to represent their mood and stitch one square of a 5×5 grid.
At the end of the activity, they’ll add a stem to the grid, transforming it into a flower—a beautiful visualization of their emotional data. This project helps students understand how data can be collected, represented, and interpreted while fostering mindfulness and creativity.
Timing:
The activity is intended to take place over 5 weeks. It can be decided whether students are to stitch their day’s feelings each day, or perhaps stitch Monday-Friday’s feelings in one go every Friday. For this reason, we have included a mood-tracker where students can log their feelings on each day so they don’t forget before their stitching time!
Materials:
- Feelings Threads Worksheet
- Feelings Thread Presentation
- Embroidery Hoops
- Thread of multiple colours
- Thread cutters / Scissors
- Felt tip pens / colouring pencils
- Needles
- Felt squares
- Thread-keeping cards
Below are some examples of different ways that classes have approached this activity, including as a cross-stitch rather than embroidery activity.
Teachers have said:
“I’ve been doing this activity with my learners for fine motor skills, as well as a daily emotional check-in. I am using the data in report writing and will also put the pieces out on parents evening.”
“It’s nice for learners to now be able to see their longer term emotional data this way and reflect on it, which they couldn’t do when they were just doing daily emotional check-ins. They find it a calming start to the day.”
© Data Education in Schools, University of Edinburgh, 2024. This resource is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0, unless otherwise indicated.