***Thinking Thursdays***

One of the Victorian Early Years Learning Outcomes is to support children’s wellbeing (Outcome 3). This not only encompasses children’s physical health, but also looks to strengthen their mental health,encouraging students ability to “manage emotions productively and build resilience and persistence” (VEYLDF, 2016, p.20). Just like any skill, the ability to manage emotions needs to be supported with many opportunities. When teaching about different emotions it’s important to discuss and provide learning opportunities to support children in:

*identifying emotions

*naming these emotions

*exploring and discussing how their body feels when they feel this emotion (for older children you could mark this on a body outline)

*ways to return to a more comfortable emotion (eg: how to transition from angry to calm)

One way to do this is to use pictures or stories to teach about emotions. An excellent story to use is I’m a Feel-O-Saur by Lezlie Evans. In this rhyming text, children will explore different emotions, and be given examples of how to return to a more comfortable emotion if needed. It even gives tips of what students can do when they recognize they are feeling this way. 

The text also lends itself to some super follow up activities. You could:

*have students colour and decorate a dinosaur and paste their face on it. They could discuss how they feel and what they could do.

*create a classroom poster with each Feel-o-Saur from the story and have children describe their own tips and tricks on what to do when they feel like this

*when children are expressing big feelings, you can support them returning to calm by identifying the feel-o-saur emotion they are experiencing and offering ways to support their transition to calm.

Teaching children about their emotions is such a critical part of their development. Children need to learn that emotions change like the weather, and they need to build their own toolbox of strategies to use when they don’t feel a comfortable emotion. 

What other texts have you used in your teaching programs to support children in building their emotional intelligence? Please comment below.