Hello and Welcome!
The CosmoActivities Substack is home to CosmoKidz, CosmoTweenz, CosmoTeenz, and CosmoParenting— free, educational resources for all ages to improve relational and communication skills. We are so glad you have found us!
How does this work?
You can find the complete sets of each activities at the following links:
CosmoKidz 31 Scenarios
CosmoTweenz “Three Choices… And Then What Happens…?”
CosmoTweenz Environmental Awareness
CosmoTeenz Comic Book
CosmoParenting Podcast
Beginning in August 2026, we will also be sharing one scenario from each of our CosmoKidz and CosmoTweenz Activities every week. You can subscribe to CosmoKidz, Three Choices, and/or Environmental Awareness to receive one activity to your inbox once a week. Our hope is that these facilitate meaningful connection and conversation for you and the children in your life weekly.
What are CosmoActivities?
Our CosmoActivities are designed for educators, parents, caregivers, and others who work with young people in a meaningful capacity. Our collection is always growing and evolving, so allow us to provide some orientation to this rich site of resources:
We suggest starting right here on our ‘About’ page, so you’re already off to a great start! Here you can get introduced to each of our activities and determine which resources are relevant to you. Follow the links below to learn more about each of our CosmoActivities:
If you are looking for conversational activities for ages 4-8, check out our CosmoKidz scenarios.
If you are looking for parenting resources, check out the CosmoParenting Podcast.
Who are we?
CosmoActivities are an ongoing initiative of the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. We are an international community of scholar-practitioners dedicated to creating better social worlds through better communication through a variety of projects, including our Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast, our Communication Creates webinar series, and our Cosmopolis 2045 project. If you are interested in learning more about our other CMM Institute initiatives, jump over to our other Substack here:
CosmoKidz
CosmoKidz is a set of illustrated scenarios exploring interpersonal topics that young children face in their everyday social worlds. Topics were gathered from young children around the world who told us, through small group conversations, what they find challenging and demanding in their own lives. The topics cover a range of scenarios from “feeling unsure” and “bullying” to “saying I am sorry” and “making new friends.”
CosmoTweenz
Three Choices… And Then What Happens…?
CosmoTweenz “Three Choices… And Then What Happens…?” are Fifty-three cards with scenarios in three categories: School, Friends, and Family. All of the scenarios are those that 8- to 11-year-olds in the United States, Norway, Great Britain and Romania have told us are important to them. We found consistency among the topics regardless of geography and believe that wherever you live, the Tweenz in your life will find these topics relevant.
Environmental Awareness
CosmoTweenz Environmental Awareness are scenario cards are aimed at helping young people bridge their sense of awareness and perspective taking from people to other living things. They are arranged in three categories: Noticing Your Surroundings, Making a Change at Home or at School, and Connecting to Others. We want to be honest in representing environmental issues as complex without inducing hopelessness. The cards aim to expand empathy and give young people opportunities to act. You can move through them in whatever order supports you best, and use as many or as few as you like. Each scenario is meant to be discussed over the course of five sessions of about 10-15 minutes each, with the fifth being expandable. Some examples of formats for discussion include:
Spend 10 minutes of circle time on this each day, moving through a card in a week.
Use the cards weekly, taking five weeks or a unit to go through one card.
Use the cards to support or lead into a specific curricular unit.
The more you use them, even for a few minutes, the more you will build a routine and the accompanying skills.
CosmoTeenz
CosmoTeenz Life in Our Garden: Anthology of Youth is a comic book created by 5 young adults, with the help of an illustrator (Sid) and a writer (Trent), made possible with support from the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution.
In 2022, the CMM Institute sought out young adult Fellows to create the next turn in the CosmoActivities educational series, following the creation of the CosmoKidz and CosmoTweenz Activities. Fatima, Haruka, MableAlexis, Tumelo Victoria, and Johanna were selected as fellows and began asking the question, “What will CosmoTeenz be?”
Ultimately, the CosmoTeenz Fellows decided to create a comic book addressing mental health as an accessible, engaging, and unique way to help teens learn to communicate about mental health. Sid and Trent were enlisted to bring the Fellows’ stories to life.
Now, the CMM Institute, along with the CosmoTeenz Team, is proud to present the finished product of their hard work along with a useful facilitation guide for expanding conversations about mental health with the teens in your life.
CosmoParenting
CosmoParenting is a continuation of the CosmoActivities line of resources created by the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution.
We don’t believe that there is one, “correct” way to parent. CosmoParenting is about recognizing that there are many ways to parent; and that each of us create our own way through the stories we live and tell. With CosmoParenting, the purpose is to find a way that works for you and uncover your parenting potential.
In this space, we invite you to see yourself as someone who is curious about and actively participating in creating your own meaning around parenting. And CosmoParenting is for all who “parent,” be that biological and adopted parents, foster parents, bonus and step-parents, grandparents, caregivers of any kind— whatever your parenting may look like— this space is inclusive to you.
The important part is noting that we are all in a process of becoming and emerging in the shared act of parenting. So, it is up to you to define parenting for yourself, but that is not to say you have to do it alone. CosmoParenting is designed to support you in this journey of figuring out what it means to parent by enriching your parenting toolbox, offering one short episode each week that provides opportunities to reflect, listen, connect, practice, and engage in conversations.
The CosmoParenting podcast consists of 12 themes:
Stories
Patterns
Adaptation
Relationships
Moral Forces
Conflict
Power
Structures
Communities
Order and Chaos
Perspectives
Change
Each of the 12 themes are made up of four distinct episode types, described below:
The journey of parenting is a lifelong one, and we think of it like improvisation- you don’t always know what will happen next, but with the right tools, practices, and language you can feel prepared and confident in meeting unexpected moments, trusting yourself to act in alignment with your hopes for yourself and your family.
Thank you for joining us for CosmoParenting. We are so glad to be on this journey with you.
Additional Resources
S.O.A.R.
Soar (verb)
a: to fly or glide high in the air.
b: to rise suddenly above the normal level.
SOAR contains the essence of what CosmoKidz is about. Young children learn through conversations and creative communication that it matters what we say and do, and how we say and do it. SOAR reminds children to be aware of this.
