Relax and Renew
Social Emotional Learning
(at home!)
From talking about our feelings to helping take care of plants, there are lots of different ways to foster social emotional learning at home. Especially during this global pandemic, it is very important for children to be aware of the different emotions they may be feeling and for them to be able to talk through these feelings in a productive way. Below are some different ways to help children start thinking about emotions. Once children are more aware of the different emotions, they can begin to develop positive strategies to work through difficult feelings. In addition to the suggestions below, Zones of Regulation can be used to help talk about different emotions and to help children find a variety of ways to self-regulate.
Encourage Emotional Expression
Feeling different emotions, both positive and negative, is totally normal and okay. Bottling up negative emotions is what can cause more trouble in the long run. Children can be encouraged to express their emotions and find different outlets to relieve worried or upset feelings.
For younger children, simply being able to name the different emotions is a good start. Have them think about how their body feels when they are experiencing a particular emotion: when they are angry, does their face feel hot? Does their stomach get tight? These are signs that can let us know that we are feeling a certain way, so that we are then able to choose to use a strategy to feel better.
Identifying the Emotions of Others
It is important for children to recognize that other people have their own emotions which may be different from how the child is feeling at the time. We can help to foster this understanding by modelling our own emotional states: identifying how we are feeling, why we are feeling that way, and what we are going to do about it.
We can also encourage children to identify the emotions of others when reading a story with them. Ask them how they think a character is feeling part way through the story, or at the end. Have them think about why the character feels that way. This can be connected back to the child's own understanding of different emotions by asking them to show what the emotion looks like, for example, "show me your excited face".
Emotion Charades
Put a SEL twist on a classic game! You can make your own charades cards, or search online. Write a different emotion on each card, and then have the child act out what the emotion looks and/or sounds like. This is also a good opportunity to talk about what different emotions feel like. Younger children may be aware of some of the more basic emotions like happy, sad, and angry - but they may need some help identifying that some other emotions might feel similar. For example, sometimes when we are excited, we feel a tingling feeling in our stomach which might be similar to how we feel when we are nervous - even though we aren't nervous at all!