Feelings

So we finally came back to school today, and had a chance to exchange valentines with all of our beloved classmates.  We spent what normally would be our time at the touch and feel pool matching the names on our valentines to our classmate's names on all the valentine bags that we decorated last week.  If our valentines didn't have specific names, then we talked about each name on the bag and the beginning letter of the name with its corresponding sound.  All the kiddos were a bustle of energy and excitement as they peeked in the bags and saw the various cards, trinkets, and prizes.

After targeting our usual calendar and weather concepts at morning circle, Ryan and Ethan enjoyed playing with Mr. Potato Head.  This week we are focusing on feelings/emotions.  As we played with the potatoes we talked about all of the different faces we could make...we made sad faces, happy faces, mad faces, and silly faces.  As always, Ryan and Ethan had to use their words to request the various parts of Mr. Potato Head.

It was a beautiful day to play outside today and all of our friends from DUMC were out.  Ryan enjoyed playing chase, hide & go seek, and playing catch with a ball; and Ethan found a left-over snow pile that he was determined to plow with a bull-dozer.

Our book today was The Story of My Feelings by Laurie Berkner.  This book has always been one of my children's favorites, as it tells the story of a little girl and all of the different things she does when she feels sad, angry, happy, and peaceful.  It has a sweet song that goes along with the book as well.  I will email you a copy of the song so that you can play it for Ryan and Ethan at home.

After we read the book, we sorted and matched pictures of people with distinct facial expressions into the feeling categories of happy, sad, and mad.  Ryan and Ethan helped me tape them to big pieces of paper on our wall.  

Then we headed to art to make feeling "stress" balls.  First, we just had fun playing with a big bin of rice and barley.  Ryan and Ethan enjoyed feeling the mixture in their hands and dumping it from one cup to another.  They experimented with it to see what kind of sounds they could make by banging it, shaking it, and rubbing it along the bottom of the touch and feel pool.  Second, we drew happy, mad, and sad faces on balloons and used a funnel to fill the balloons with rice.  We were supposed to also fill our feelings balloons with play-doh, but we had such a hard time getting the play-doh in the balloon, that we decided that rice would work just fine!  Both Ryan and Ethan personally requested "happy" balloons (so neither one of them must be feeling too much stress! :)).  Last, we tied the balloons into a knot and talked about all the different feelings that each balloon expressed.  

Practice for home:

Read the blog with your son and talk about what is going on in the pictures.  Ask them which face is happy, sad, etc and have him also label the feeling that he sees on each face as additional reinforcement of this vocabulary.  Be on the lookout for the song we sang today about feelings attached to your email and let me know if you have any trouble opening the file.  

Looking forward to seeing your sweet boys again on Thursday for more activities about feelings.