I published this post a year ago, but I'm reposting because it's been such a popular one... My daughter-in-law purchased a book I immediately fell in love with and just HAD to share! It's called The Color Monster: A Pop-Up Book of Feelings. It's important for children to learn to identify and express a wide range of feelings, while also understanding that others have feelings, too. Learning about feelings and emotions is part of developing positive self-esteem and better relationships with others. As a child's emotional intelligence grows, they are increasingly able to use their emotional information to guide their own thinking and behaviour; in other words, to calm themselves down. In my experience as a first grade teacher, I witnessed on a daily basis that those children who were able to name and understand their own feelings were able to handle the ups and downs of childhood with much more confidence and maturity than their peers who lacked that understanding. What I love about The Color Monster, aside from the perfectly charming monster, is that the author, Anna Llenas, names each emotion, describes it, and gives an example of how it might feel. She normalizes the emotions and doesn't label them as good or bad; they just ARE. She repeats this format in three simple sentences with each of the emotions: sadness, anger, fear, calmness, happiness. Here's an example from the sadness page.
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