Lisa Smith, one of our Support for Learning Assistants, has been exploring emotions with the children in the Rainbow playroom. It has been extremely worthwhile in increasing the children’s awareness of reading body language and anticipating how someone might be feeling, to build empathy with others. We have seen lots of different types of faces as we have role played, drawn and modelled how different emotions look. It has been lots of fun and made us think carefully about how we feel at different times. Here are some of Lisa’s posts with some great comments from the children:
Today we drew different facial features on paper, and used these to make various expressions and feeling faces. This helps the children to think about how they may be feeling at certain times, and encourages them to identify many different emotions they may experience. The children enjoyed making lots of silly faces with this activity, and lots of fun was had chatting about when we might have a very silly face. For some of the children I asked them to make a face correlating to a particular feeling, and then look in the mirror at their own face to see the sort of shapes their features were in.
Iona ‘ I am sad when I get in trouble’
Emma ‘ I am happy when I am at nursery and I can play with Zara’
Arabella ‘ If my big cousin Ellie was coming for a sleepover I would be surprised’
Using homemade playdough we were exploring feelings and facial expressions today. We made a variety of facial expressions together using the playdough, and then chatted about times where we might have feelings of happiness, excitement, sadness, worry and surprise. We also started to explore the sensations we may have in our bodies when we have those emotions.
Many of the children had a good understanding of situations where they may feel differing emotions.
‘I would have a surprised face if I got a present not for my birthday’ – Sophie
I would have a worried face if my baby crosses the road by itself’ – Callum
”I am happy when I play with my friends at nursery’ – Iona
