One of my all-time favourite quotes by Maya Angelou is – ‘They may not remember what you said, they may not remember what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel’

Young children are often challenged with big feelings like anger, frustration or sadness, however often lack the emotional awareness and breadth of language to articulate themselves in a given situation. As adults, we have a key role in modelling calm and considered responses in order to help children with using coping strategies. Over time, young children will grow in their emotional understanding and self-control through the consistent nurturing and supportive approach taken by the adult. 

Introducing the language of emotions

It can be a good practice to begin introducing children to the language of emotions and feelings through the medium of story telling and things like puppets. It can be helpful to discuss how various characters in books may feel. Pause to ask, “How do you think he feels right now?” Then, discuss the various feelings the character may be experiencing and the reasons why. Helpful books might include –  The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas  , In My Heart by Jo Witek or Lucy’s Blue Day by Christopher Duke

Encouraging children to talk about emotions using a colour analogy  can  help children to reflect on their emotions. The International Futures Forum ‘Kit Bag’ has some excellent resources for talking about emotions, including a colour chart to support children’s thinking and reflection. The picture below shows the contents of the Kit Bag.

A good example of using a colour analogy is encouraging children to check in daily, using the colours to describe how they are feeling that day using a ‘feelings jar’ 

Children who understand their emotions are less likely to act out by using temper tantrums, aggression, and defiance to express themselves. A child who can say, “I’m angry with you,” is less likely to hit. And a child who can say, “That hurts my feelings,” is more likely to resolve their conflict peacefully. 

It can be a good idea to allow children to observe themselves while they explore what an emotion makes them feel inside their bodies and how it changes their facial expression. 

Here the children were re-creating different emotions in front of a mirror to see how their faces looked:

Teaching Coping Strategies

It is important to help children to understand that just because they feel angry doesn’t mean they can hit someone. Instead, they need to learn emotional regulation strategies so they can resolve conflict peacefully. We can be proactive and help children learn how to deal with uncomfortable emotions. Other feelings, for which it is important we support children to process in a nurturing, caring way are things like sadness. For example when children feel sad when friends won’t play with them, take time to talk about ways they can deal with their sad feelings. Children don’t always know how to react when they feel sad, and so this can sometimes manifest in aggressive and attention-seeking behaviours. 

Something that I have seen to work well in centres is to try and create a ‘calm corner’ or quiet space where children can go in order to learn how to self-regulate and calm themselves in times of highly charged emotional states. These areas could have resources such as blankets, soft toys, soothing music, glitter jars and other mindfulness games.

Further ideas for exploring emotions:

• Use puppets to act out different situations (e.g, one puppet takes a toy from another puppet); ask the children what emotion the puppets might be feeling. After labelling the emotions, have children practice making the emotion with their own faces. Then ask what the puppet should do next to help when feeling the emotion. Have the puppet model coping with the emotion. This could lend itself well to supporting the children to make their own puppets made from odd socks or with lollypop sticks and old lids.
• Play an emotion guessing game. Take a piece of paper or small blanket and hold it in front of your face. Slowly lower it down to reveal your face showing an emotion. Children guess the emotion you are feeling, and then show everyone their face with that same emotion. Then, talk about what might make you feel this way.
• Children could create their own set of feeling stones – encourage children to choose colours that represent a feeling for them. These could be put in a mindfulness/calm corner or used as part of a circle time before children go home to talk about how they felt about their day in nursery. 
• Communicate on eye level with all children and show them how your face looks when you feel different emotions. For example, you might say, “ I’m feeling sad because my friends weren’t listening to me when it was my turn to talk, see how my mouth and eyes turn down and I got really quiet.”
• Sing when you’re happy and you know it with verses using happy, mad, sad, excited, scared etc. Include the actions you might do when you are feeling each emotion. For example, “If you’re mad and you know it, scrunch your face, give a growl, cross your arms, etc.” Have children generate different ideas. Have each child look in the mirror when they arrive. Label what emotion you think they are feeling by describing the facial features of that emotion.
• Using playdough and loose parts, have the children make different emotion faces with them.

By Hannah Polland