For preschool and kinder aged children, they can often have a hard time identifying and understanding their emotions. They may get really angry and not know why they are angry or how to stop being angry. This can be a challenge for many children, as well as adults to fully understand their emotions. A great way to help your kids out, is to have them physically display the emotions and begin to open up a conversation about feelings. When using these facial props you can use scenarios to have kids begin to identify and process emotions. For example, you can ask your child to create a “sad face”. Ask them why this face looks sad, why might this person be sad, what can they do to not be sad. As you can see it is great to use the distinct emotion as a stepping stone for discussion about emotional regulation. If your child is really beginning to understand and identify emotions you can have them to come up with their own scenarios. To make these faces you can do it in many ways depending which materials you have in the house. These examples are great because it allows your child to interchange the different facial features of the emotion easily. Adventure in a Box used paper dolls to demonstrate the facial features of different emotions. Where Imagination Grows used the method of painting different facial features on stones (for example: nose, mouth, eyes, eyebrows). You could take a great nature walk to find stones that could be used as certain features. Similar to the emotion stones, We Are Teachers used playdough to mold into the different emotional features. These examples are such a great way to have your kids experience hands-on learning when processing their emotions.
Comments