How to teach your toddler about emotions. PLUS Children’s book review of “The Way I Feel” by Janan Cain.
Introducing the concept of emotions to your toddler, or Preschooler is vital to helping them internalize what they are feeling from day to day. I also like to believe that an introduction to this lesson early for children will help them to avoid internalizing all emotions through anger and tantrums. I took a moment to teach my preschooler about the range of emotions we all feel, to better help her process and communicate her own feelings. I began by addressing big emotions and reassuring her that big emotions are normal and common. These included Happy, Angry, Sad, Frustrated, Excited and Jealous. As an introduction to this, I began with reading the book “The way I Feel” by Janan Cain. This book covered being silly, scared, happy, sad, angry, excited, and proud. The explanation and illustrations were easy to follow and as a bonus, it even offered a discussion section to review with your kids. I would highly recommend.
As a follow-up, we had a quick chat and review based on the discussion questions provided at the end of the book. After we spoke about the emotions in depth, we did a few follow-up activities.
Follow-up Activities to try at home
We used a paper plate to create a face for each emotion in the book, and attached a large popsicle stick to each plate for a handle. I then made up a random scenario (one they might face at school), and had them guess using the paper plate faces, which way the character in the scenario is left to feel.
Next I found a small children’s poem (song lyrics will also do), not only to introduce poetry, but also to suggest a new medium through which emotions can be conveyed. We reviewed the poem and I made sure to be super animated to convey the differences between each feeling.
As a fun kinesthetic and movement activity, we played emotional charades. I went online and found images of each emotion. At this point we began to branch out onto other emotions to learn. For some I used emoji’s, children’s facial expressions through google images, and then cut out each image. I folded each picture up and put them in a hat or bucket to pull from. We then took turns acting an emotion and guessing what it was. This was a great game to play. We had a lot of fun!
Finally, for the ultimate recap, we watched the movie “Inside Out”! It was a perfect end to this homemade lesson.