Feeling Blue or Red or Green

Dr. Seuss is one of our favorite authors and we always enjoy reading My Many Colored Days. As a matter of fact, we have done this project before, but since we have been talking about feelings, I thought it would be appropriate to do it again.

How are you feeling today? A little blue? Yellow? I enjoyed talking to C and R about the way different colors can express moods and emotions. C remembered reading that Koko the gorilla used the color red to express anger. If you are not familiar with Koko, she is a gorilla that communicates with people through sign language.

After reading My Many Colored Days and discussing the colors/feelings connection, C and R painted their own colorful pages of emotion.

Look at C finger painting. This may be a first. I almost fell over when he told me he was going to finger paint.

R never hesitates when it comes to finger (or whole hand) painting. She has no problem getting messy.

R was feeling pretty cool; green, blue, and purple.

C was in a warm and fuzzy mood with lots of red, yellow, and orange.

This week, I am linking our book project to A Mommy's Adventures where Michelle hosts stArt. The idea is to combine a story with an art project. If you are interested in reading about stArt projects, visit A Mommy's Adventures.

An Emotional Roller Coaster

Sometimes we are up.

Sometimes we are down.

That's life. If we didn't experience different emotions, we would be incredibly boring.

C, R, and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing emotions and how we should respond to our own emotions and the emotions of others.
There are many great books on this topic, but two of our favorites are When Sophie Gets Angry -- Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Both books provide a great opportunity to discuss how the characters were feeling and what they did about their feelings. I also think the characters experience things that are easy for my children to relate to.

I know that many people are bothered by the fact that Sophie (the main character in the Molly Bang book) runs out the door. I have read the complaint that this teaches children to run away when they are angry, and I disagree. Sophie is not running away, she is simply running. We all need outlets to deal with different emotions, and running is a great way to calm down. If your child needs to run off his or her anger, what is wrong with that? Like everything else our children do, we as parents are surely capable of placing limits on where they may or may not run. Problem solved.

C, R and I worked together to make a list of things to do when we are feeling angry or sad or even happy. We also spent some time role playing different situations. C and R have so much fun role playing. They also love to do book dramatizations. Do you teach your children to deal with anger (or any emotions) in a specific way?

Silly, Sad, Jealous, Mad

Can you guess what we have been working on at home? Feelings, of course. Why we feel angry or jealous or happy, etc. and how we should behave when our feelings are not positive. One of the books we read is The Way I Feel by Janan Cain. I like that this book addresses feelings that are not typically in books for young children. For example, there are pages devoted to disappointment and frustration. Both of these feelings are common for young children, yet they are often left out of books for this age group.

While reading the book, C and R used their teddy bear emotions puzzles to create a teddy bear with the expression that matched the feeling on the page we were discussing. This was a great way to explore the different emotions.

Stay tuned for more posts on this subject.