11 replies to this topic

[tracie41064]

can anyone give me any ideas for activities to help children aged 0-3 years with dealing with their emotions.

[sarahnev707]

I got some face stampers from Poundland (smile, sad, confused etc); I have lots of pics of faces (multicultural) with different looks on them; we talk about how teddy is feeling today when we do our weather picture; I will write a book with a child who is sad/happy etc and refer back to it with them; I will always talk about how I am feeling (tired usually!) and ask children to share their feelings with me; I sing mood songs - 'sun has got it's hat on', 'if you're sad and you know it/if you're happy and you know it'; we look at books from the library about being frightened, losing a loved one/animal etc
Sarah x

[MissSunnyDay]

We have a friendship bear called "Freddy". Freddy watchs sometimes and some things make him sad, happy, worrid, unsure. Freddy tells me what he has seen and we all talk about it at circle time, the children are really attached to Freddy and become quite concerned if he is upset. We also made a big display board showing different pictures of Freddys face to start talking to the children how he feels.
Peggy had a great idea and I am using this in our setting now, cutting out pictures of children and pasting them on a big board this is our "How do you feel today board". (thanks Peggy!).

[Wolfie]

I think Sarah's got the right idea in that much of the work you do with this age group about dealing with emotions needs to come from a first hand experience - it's much easier to talk about and explore a particular emotion if a child/adult is actually experiencing it at the time. I know there are lots of good fiction and non-fiction books around exploring different emotions but I think that a "catch it when it happens" style of teaching may be more effective at this stage. Children have often forgotten how they were feeling less than five minutes laterso it's important to deal with it immediately. Circle time will often produce some very useful chats as well if the adult storytells something that maybe happened to them personally involving a particular emotion.

Unfortunately, this kind of teaching and learning can't really be planned for on a regular basis! But that's the case with a lot of PSE stuff I find!

[Marion]

We use a programme called Getting Along which our Early Years team devised which has a set of books about different situations and feelings

[Posy]

Marion, are your 'feelings'books available for sale to others?
Posy

[Marion]

I'm not sure they come in a pack which is very good. I will try and contact someone on the team to find out.

All the stories are based around Benji Bear and involve things like birthdays.

[Posy]

thanks for that.
Posy

[Marion]

I've just had an email from Amazon recommending this
Exploring Emotions (Paperback)
by Ros Bayley

[SmileyPR]

Maybe your children can make faces and you can photograph them.

Something else:  Facial_Expression_Pictures.pdf   392.23K   72 downloads

[LJW]

We often use impromptu conversations at Registration or circle time with our littlies. When a conversation comes up, or maybe we read a story with emotions in it, or sing a song.... we pause for a moment and say 'who can make a sad face' (move our hands down past our face changing our expression as we do so) 'and a happy face' (move hand back up past face). The children very quickly catch on and invariably offer other sorts of faces to make. We praise children who can make a really good face, they can come upto the front if they want and show everyone and we all have another go. This can be extended by asking a child to make a face and we all try to guess how they are feeling.
Very simple but very effective with 2 year olds upwards. Hope I explained ok....

I recently saved some blank drawn faces from here somewhere. I laminated them and put them in the playdough for the children to add faces too, I'll try to find them and attach it here!

Attached Files

•  face_cards_to_add_expressions.pdf   351.69K   48 downloads

[tracie41064]

Thank you so much for all your applies they are very much appreciated.
Tracey