How Do You Teach A Younger Child To Have An Emotional Perspective?

Using picture books that embed social and emotional learning topics is a great way to help build a wide range of skills and abilities like self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and resilience. Picture books help children to identify and label feelings. You can encourage this skill while reading to your child and helping them to recognize and label feelings in themselves, and the characters in the book. For example, while reading the story “ Little Sammy Square Finds His Voice” begin by labeling the feelings of Little Sammy Square’s facial expressions, describing and discussing what he might look and feel like throughout the story. And then have the child practice making their own feeling faces.

• “Little Sammy Square felt sad that he didn’t look and act like the rest of his family. I see his mouth is turning down into a frown, his lip is sticking out like he might cry, and his eyebrows sort of turn down”.

• Hold up a mirror and let the child practice making this same expression. Continue reading the story and see what other emotions you discover and practice naming them together.