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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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7 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*.
