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Nurturing Feelings in Infants and Toddlers
How do you talk about feelings with the little ones in your care? Whether it’s with infants or toddlers, what fun and effective ways do you use to explore emotions and create a positive emotional atmosphere in your environment? Share your creative ideas!
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42 Replies
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Storytime becomes an excellent opportunity to explore emotions. I choose books with relatable characters facing various feelings, and we discuss the characters’ emotions together.
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Linda, integrating emotions into storytime is an effective way to explore and discuss feelings with little ones. It creates a positive and relatable learning environment. Great approach!
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we use books at story time to talk about feelings and emotions. At the end of story time, we have an open discussion about them. Circle time is another way of using songs as a vehicle to talk about feelings and emotions.
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I use puppets to talk about friendhips and emotions. My class loves it when our puppets come to visit to talk about feelings and even some example roll playing for situations – ie when two people want the same toy.
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In our toddler classroom, we have a handheld mirror toy with emotion slides attached to it. The children and I take turns picking slides (scowling = anger, frown = sad, smile = happy, etc) and making those faces in the mirror while using the names for the emotions we’re showing.
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Great idea, Chantill! Using a handheld mirror toy with emotion slides is an engaging and effective way to explore emotions with toddlers while promoting language development. Well done!
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I don’t work with infants or toddlers, I work with older pre-school age kids and school-age kids. These kids are generally old enough to have more complex conversations about emotion, but may occasionally still have emotional outbursts. I try to remain calm and comforting when a child throws a tantrum, expressing understanding and sympathy for their frustrations, even if I have to ultimately hold the line. I also try to challenge kids to think about how other kids feel in different situations, or how *they’d* feel if something happened to *them*.
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The way I talk too little ones bout feelings I ask them how are you feeling or like can you tell me what’s wrong and why do you feel like that do you need some love
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Galilea, your approach of asking open-ended questions and offering love is wonderful for nurturing emotional intelligence in young children. Keep up the great work!
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I would talk about my feelings by just having a one-on-one conversation with my students, but also sometimes using toys as a role-playing scenario that would help them with their learning. I think the fun and effective ways that I would use to explore emotions and create a positive emotional atmosphere in my environment is doing circle time or reading them a story about feelings.
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I work with pre-k children and what I do to help them regulate their emotions is to have them breathe first with yoga relaxation, then once they are calm, I ask them to explain to me what happened. Then we talk about their feelings and how to solve the problem.
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“Mariangel, your approach of combining yoga relaxation with open conversations about emotions is fantastic! It’s a calming and constructive way to help children regulate and express their feelings.”
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I like to ask them how they are feeling, usually when they are upset although it should be during a range of emotions. I ask them what happened, and ask if it made them feel tightness in their stomach, hard to breathe, pain in their throat or eyes, the desire to hurt someone, etc, and explain why they may feel that having addressed the situation (mom left, wanted a toy, etc). I also like to ask how they feel after we do a breathing activity during circle time, so they know breathing brings calmness.
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Nicole, your approach of using both reflective questions and calming breathing activities is a great way to help children understand and manage their emotions effectively!
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We have a mood chart with faces and a slider that can switch between moods. If a child is feeling frustrated, we’ll ask them to choose the face that fits their mood the best
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The children in my care are all one year olds, so we talk a lot about feelings by narrating what’s happening. For example, if a child 1’s preferred teacher is doing another child’s diaper, then the other teacher would say something like “yeah, sometimes we feel sad when Teacher is busy and can’t hold us. I see you’re feeling sad, we can play together while we wait for her to be done.” We also read a lot of simple books about emotions since they’re super into being read to right now.
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I work with preschool aged children (4-5y), and they are very understanding of their feelings in most situations. One way I get them to think about their feelings is at circle time, when the children greet each other good morning and ask one another how they are. When a child gives a response of how they are doing that morning, we encourage the other children to ask “Why?” This not only gets the children thinking about how they’re feeling (happy, sad, tired, frustrated, etc.) but gets them thinking deeper about why they are feeling that way.
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Tamarra, I love how you encourage children to reflect on their emotions and understand the reasons behind them. It promotes self-awareness and empathy in a fun, engaging way!
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I use open ended questions. Puppets posters or show them using my face
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I talk about how I see what their face is doing. I also talk about that I observe. I see your looking upset. Your frowning and your hands are in fists. Do you want to talk about it? I also have a weighted porcupine children can sit with, hold, touch to calm down.
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Great approach, Annette! Observing and naming emotions helps children connect with their feelings. Using the weighted porcupine is a creative tool for comfort. Keep fostering that emotional awareness!
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My classroom has a mixed age group of 3-6 year olds. I spend a lot of time in close observation of the children. My goal is to see the subtle signs that some emotional regulation is needed. I don’t necessarily intervene as I want to give the child/children time to self regulate but I will take them aside to talk with them shortly thereafter. I’ll share my observation, for example, “I noticed Jane wouldn’t give you a turn, you turned away and your face was frowning”. I then validate the child’s feelings, ask them to tell me how they felt and if they don’t have the words, I’ll make suggestions like you seemed angry or frustrated. If the child is still upset, I’ll ask them to take a couple of deep breaths with me. I’ll also ask them what they want to do now. I also agree, that circle time, is a great opportunity for children to talk about emotions. This can occur in the context of a story where I will have children take turns naming the emotions of the characters or where the storyline specifically relates to emotions.
