This week at The Children’s House we will be focussing on our emotions for the week! Sometimes young children can find it hard to express how they are feeling, and naming and discussing those feelings, and how it is appropriate to deal with them, can be very helpful to them. For this reason, we will firstly be looking at different emotions (e.g. happy, sad, angry, lonely, loved, jealous), recognising them in ourselves and talking about what we do when we feel like that. We will be practising relaxation techniques like yoga and deep breathing, expressing emotions through making & using emotion masks, and discussing appropriate vs inappropriate ways of expressing emotions – emotional regulation is a huge thing for young children to learn, so we try to support them in this in preschool as much as we can.

During the week we will be making a worry box with each of the classes – this is a box that we decorate together, and if any of the children are worried about something, we write it down on a piece of paper and put it into the box until the child decides that they’re not worried about it anymore, whereupon they can tear it up and put it in the recycling bin! This gives a very real representation to the children that worries are temporary things, which come and go, so it can help to put anxieties they may have to rest.

If You’re Happy & You Know It