Exploring Our Emotions

This activity focused on the children's ability in recognizing, accepting and expressing their emotions. During circle time, the children identified how they were feeling that day by using the pieces of paper that read: "I feel" and attached it beside the corresponding faces. They then created shakers with materials that represented the specific emotions that they were feeling. The blue coloured rice represented sadness, red macaroni for anger, the white beads for scared and the seashells for happy. The children asked to use these shakers to sing songs before they left the program, such as: Shake My Sillies Out.

Materials

• Poster board

• Velcro/masking tape

• Card stock

• Clear containers

• Macaroni

• Rice

• Beads

• Seashells

• Construction paper

• Markers

• Measuring spoons

• Trays

Learning Objectives & Outcomes from Early Learning for Every Child Today

ELECT 4.7: Symbolic Thought, Representation, and Root Skills of Literacy

• using gestures and materials to stand for idea and imitating adult actions, pretend play.

ELECT 2.5 Regulating Attention, Emotions and Behaviour

• increasingly expressing emotions appropriately, using language to communicate needs and regulate emotions, gaining control of their behaviour.

ELECT 5.3 The Sense

• Auditory exploration and discrimination.

Observations

• Social skills through sharing materials: "Can I have some of the rice?"

• The children mixed different materials together to show that they were feeling more than one emotion such as sad and scared.

• Describing the sounds of the materials: "This sounds loud!"

• Describing the materials' properties: "This shell is so big! This one is a baby shell!"

• Stickers were given out after the activity that were smiley faces. The children said: "My face is happy!"

Reflection and Outcomes

Starting the activity with a board labelled as "How Are You Feeling Today?" helped the children recognize and acknowledge how they were feelings. Moreover, asking the children to pick their favourite song to sing encouraged them to share their emotions after. Another effective aspect of this activity was labelling the containers with each emotion, which helped them to identify and represent how they were feeling. The children were also excited in shaking their shakers to release their emotions in our closing songs.