Making Friends with your Feelings
By Cath Chell from Learn Well
Recognising emotions and talking about them is an important skill to teach children; I think we would all agree? But it is not as easy as seeing a smiley face and saying ‘happy’! Recognising our own feelings is all about what is going on inside us, it’s physical. And we are all diff erent. Unless you run to a mirror every time you feel anything new, very few of us actually see our own faces expressing emotions. So, helping children recognise that heavy weight of sadness in their tummy, that tingle of excitement in their toes or that bumpety bump, fearful heartbeat in their chest takes time, patience, and focus.
The starting point is to embrace ALL feelings and accept that they are all valid, rather than thinking of some as good and others as bad. Though, without doubt, some are more pleasant to experience than others. They give us valuable information about ourselves and others. We feel angry if we perceive ourselves to be treated unfairly, or if our boundaries have been violated. We feel sad if we lose someone we love or experience another kind of loss. Envy tells us what we want in life. Fear alerts us to danger and so on. Feelings really are essential for our survival and sense of self; they tell us the kind of people we are.
Helping children to recognise their emotions and understand what has caused the feeling, and then work out if they need to do something or talk to someone is a huge task and not to be rushed or treated lightly.
Take time to explore each emotion in some depth. Through poetry, stories, drama, art and musical activities, give each feeling the space it needs to be recognised, understood and talked about.
Here are some activity ideas to get you started, taken from our Little Book of Big Emotions Series with the kind permission of the authors. Each activity can be done for all emotions (but not at the same time!).
What you'll need
427369 Little Book of Emotions - Pack of 3 520006 Bag of Buddies Set 1 427368 Bag of Buddies Set 2 520012 Little Looking Mirrors
18 For more ideas and inspiration visit
ypo.co.uk/littlelearners
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