Emotions: Day 4, 5 & 6

On Thursday, I finished 1+1+1=1's tot book. But we were running late, so I didn't have time to work with B. He chose to bring our books into the kitchen though and "read" them to me while I was cooking.



Friday, we took a break. (B was on an unbelievable emotional roller coaster on Friday.) But we were back on track yesterday. We worked through the "color my emotions" squares and started discussing WHY people might feel the way that they do (using Dinos on the Go. We asked how different people in the illustrations & then why?) Why is a VERY difficult concept for B.

Emotions: Day 3

We went to the library yesterday and got our books for this unit.

We'll be reading:

Bear feels scared by Karma Wilson
Grump by Janet S Wong
How about a hug? by Nancy L Carlson
If You're Happy and You Know It by Jane Cabrera
My Many Colored Days by Dr. Suess
Today I Feel Silly... by Jamie Lee Curtis

We also checked out Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, but although I have fond memories of this story, B seemed less than enchanted.... I think he's still a little too young to appreciate it, so we'll be focusing on the other books.

We also instituted a chore chart for B yesterday. We're starting with just 4 simple chores: Wash the table (after dinner), assist with unloading the dishwasher & rinse dishes to place in the dishwasher, clean up at the end of the day & brush teeth.




You'll notice there are velcro strips on the front of cards. There's velcro on the back of the cards too. When B is done with a chore, he can just flip it over & then after he goes to bed, all I have to do is flip the cards back over. This is an idea I got Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.

Emotions, Day 2

Today we went to the zoo, which gave me lots of time to start laminating cards from 1 + 1 + 1 = 1's Tot book.

We don't have it all together yet, but it's coming together.

When we got home from the zoo, B & I played memory... B did good at taking turns, but he really hasn't figured out how to play memory yet. ;) Every time we made a pair, B would name the emotion.

He also started playing with the "How Are we feeling?" people. (I put velcro where the heads belong and on the back of all of the faces.) We didn't work through any scenarios yet, but B enjoyed picking out a face & naming the emotion.

School!

The sitter's kid starts school this week & B is bummed. He wants to go to school so badly, so I promised him, we would start doing "school" at home (in all my abundant spare time).


We're going to start with a unit on emotions.


Today's activity:

We printed out the emotions sorting game here and I cut out all of the faces. I gave B one of the large faces and asked him how the person felt. I wrote his answer on the top of the paper & let him paste the large face on the paper. Then he found and pasted the three matching small faces on the same page. We repeated until we did all four. Then I let him color and decorate.

Some activities that I think might be on the docket (We'll be using 1 + 1 + 1 = 1's Tot Book on some of these.):

• An emotions memory game
  
• "Color My Emotion"
  
• Reading books about emotions
• A "Today I Feel..." station on the refrigerator
  
• "How are we feeling game?" -- Where I explain scenarios & B finds the face that matches what the child would be feeling
  
• An emotions matching page (I'll have to help him with this) where B draws a line to match the word and the face
  
• Singing "If you're happy and you know it..." with verses for mad, sad, tired, etc.
  
• Playing "Mommy says..." with "act happy, sad, mad, etc."
  
• We may use the clown craft here and talk about turning the smile upside down to make a sad face.
  
• If I'm really adventurous, we'll make some different eyes and mouths & have B have create faces -- He has to find the angry eyes & match with an angry mouth to make and angry face on a paper plate -- We'll see how this goes.
• Playing Emotions Bingo (or some sort of Emotions Board Game)

• A Gross Motor Skills Game where we draw faces with sidewalk chalk & B has to run or jump or hop to the appropriate face.