Skills to Pratice this Month
- Teach your child socially acceptable ways to disagree.
- Talk to your child about how to cooperate with others and ways to express anger, frustration, or a different opinion without hitting, biting, or other unacceptable expressions.
- Demonstrate common expressions of courtesy and praise your child for using them.
- Say "please" and "thank you" and encourage your child to do so also.
Activities
To help your child express her feelings and talk about emotions, use paper plates and markers to make "face plates". Each plate can show a face that represents different feelings, like happy, sad, angry, and surprised. Give the faces "voices" to explain what caused their feelings. Play a game with your child by telling a short story and asking your child how the person in the story might feel. Such as "Tommy was playing in the block area and Sue came over and grabbed a block out of his hand. How do you think that made Tommy feel?" Ask your child to hold up the plate that shows that feeling. Then let your child tell the story and you hold up the appropriate “face plate.”
Make “Feelings Puppets.”
Materials:
- Small paper plates
- Large craft sticks
- Glue
- Crayons or markers
- Strong tape or stapler
Have your child draw facial features on a paper plate. Ask him, "How can you make your face look angry? Sad? Scared?" Attach a craft stick to each plate with strong tape or a stapler. As an alternate activity, have your child find pictures of faces in magazines, cut them out and glue them to the paper plates.
Sing the Happy/Angry Song to the tune of “ Are You Sleeping?” Ask your child, “What makes you happy?” “What makes you angry?” Insert their responses in the blanks and have the child act out the feelings. Sing several rounds.
I feel happy, I feel happy—
See me smile, see me smile.
Happy, happy, happy,
_______ makes me happy.
See me smile, see me smile.
I feel angry, I feel angry—
See me frown, see me frown.
Angry, angry, angry—
_______ makes me angry.
See me frown, see me frown.
If you want to extend this song to other feelings, try these:
grumpy (see me pout)
silly (see me wiggle)
proud (see me strut)
sad (see me cry)
scared (see me shiver)
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