Exploring Emotions With Young Children
July 5th, 2011
One of the simplest ways to study emotions is through discussion of a picture book. There are many different picture books that have a good story and show the character’s emotions. Read the story with your children. You might read it several times over the day. Talk about the character’s emotions, and ask the children why the character feels a certain way.
Another technique used to explore emotions is the observation and discussion of the emotional lives of others. Successful empathy programs such as Roots of Empathy use babies as the focus of classroom visits, encouraging children to understand their own emotions by exploring the baby’s feelings. If you have a baby in the family, talk with your young children about how the baby might be feeling about a particular activity. Encourage them to engage with the baby to see how the baby
When friends visit, talk about how the friends might feel about a particular event that occurs. When a friend cries or gets upset, discuss this with your child after the friend has gone home.
Understanding others’ emotions is an important social skill for young children, and it’s one that is probably easier to teach at home than in a classroom. Young children benefit from lots of one-on-one discussion about other peoples’ emotions and their own.
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Tags: Emotions, Emotions Young
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