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This past month I have been teaching the littles all about BIG EMOTIONS.

If you have a young child then you understand, teaching BIG emotions to LITTLE kids can be difficult.

Emotions are deep. The concept of our feelings and why we are feeling a certain way is complex. Sometimes it’s even hard for me, as a grown woman, to understand my emotions. If we leave a child to figure out their feelings on their own, it will simply be too much for them.

Related Read: Big Emotions: The Color Monster

This is one area we as parents really need to focus on. We should be diligent in teaching our young children:

• What their emotions are.
• Why they are feeling these emotions.
• What is the correct way to express these emotions.
• It is absolutely okay to feel a certain way.
• They will be loved no matter what they are feeling and it is okay to tell mommy and daddy what is going on in their head and heart.
• Feelings are often times fleeting. Just because they feel sad right now, doesn’t mean they will always be sad.

Why is it important to teach our little children about big emotions?

I’ll admit, as a mom I completely understand. Sometimes it is easy to get frustrated with our children and expect them to know how they should react when they have certain feelings. We say things like “why are you crying? Don’t you know better?” or “there is no reason to feel that way.”

As a thirty one year old woman I have to deal with my emotions every day. Just like my children. When I don’t get to watch my favorite television show because my husband wants to watch baseball, I may feel annoyed or upset. I also know that throwing a temper tantrum, screaming at the top or my lungs or throwing something IS NOT okay behavior, even if I am feeling upset.

This wasn’t something I knew coming out of my mother’s womb though. I was TAUGHT the correct way what my feelings were, how to recognize them and how to respond and manage these emotions.

This is called emotional intelligence.

Our children do not come out of us just knowing how to manage their emotions. They spend the first several years of their lives learning from us the correct way to respond and manage. If we are not diligent in teaching them correct habits, they will try to figure out what works on their own. Insert temper tantrums.

Let me paint a scenario for you. You go to the park with your child and play for a good hour. Then you say to your child, Bobby it’s time to go home now. But Bobby doesn’t want to go home, he feels mad that he has to leave, so he pitches a fit.

You start to feel embarrassed because uh oh your child is throwing a HUGE tantrum in front of all these parents and children. So you say okay Bobby we can stay for a little while longer. You think to yourself he just doesn’t want to leave, it won’t hurt him to give in for a few more minutes. Bobby thinks to himself ohhh so that’s how I handle being mad. He starts learning a bad habit of throwing a fit when he’s mad.

This is what I am talking about when I say we need to be diligent when we are teaching our children to manage their emotions.

A better way to handle the situation would be to give your child warnings ahead of time. Bobby, we are leaving the park in 10 minutes. Bobby we have 5 minutes left. Then when it is time to go say something positive and reinforcing if your child starts to feel overwhelmed by their emotions.

Bobby, I can see that you are upset that we have to leave, but throwing a fit is not how we handle this emotion. Here’s a better way.

Teach them to identify the emotion they are feeling with the correct word, then teach them how to handle said emotion (I am leaving this blank because I believe it’s up to each individual family to decide how to teach their child to handle emotions.)

We use a combination of ways to teach our child to manage their emotions. A few are: time ins, calm down jar and calm down kit.

Do not mock your child for their emotions or meet their whining with mock or real whining of your own. It teaches absolutely nothing. Why pass up a great opportunity to teach your child something important?

I will say because we teach our children what their emotions are and the correct way to handle them, we have seen a huge decrease in major tantrums.

Your first focus should be teaching your child what emotions are. What are words to identify these emotions? Why do they feel a certain way?

Since I was a little girl my favorite activity was reading.

If there was a book involved I was there. I still am! It makes absolute sense that my favorite way to teach anything is with a book.

It’s no wonder the Charlotte Mason method is my favorite method for homeschooling!

Recently we learned about big emotions with the help of the Color Monster. He helped the girls learn what their emotions are and how to sort them all out. Because sometimes our emotions get all jumbled up!

Today we learned about Big Emotions with the help of the book TODAY I FEEL SILLY, written by Jamie Lee Curtis and illustrated by Laura Cornell.

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First I want to say I love this book! (Really I love most books, but still.) The illustrations are beautiful and detailed in way I love to see children’s books. We may not realize it but children love the details. They pick up on everything, even if it’s something you miss.

Today I Feel Silly is also funny, no surprise being written by Jamie Lee Curtis.

This book takes the reader on a journey with a little girl who is figuring out her emotions. I like how different emotions were included like cranky, frustrated and quiet. There is a good mix of feelings and it strays from the generic: happy, sad, mad and I am glad. (ha did you see what I did there?)

I do want to add that in this book the little girl mentions that she has a crush on her teacher. I wanted to add this because I know some parents may feel iffy about a crush on a teacher. I’ll be honest when I first read through it I thought “hmmmm.” But I do believe it’s 100% innocent.

However, I don’t think my girls even know what a crush is. They are homeschooled and they haven’t learned that word from their friends (that I know of, because they’ve never used it around me!) So, I’m pretty sure the concept flies right over there heads. And if we are going to be honest with ourselves, did we manage to get through grade school without having a crush on a teacher? I didn’t!

But I want you to know before you go out and get the book just in case having a crush on a teacher isn’t something you want to mention to your child!

You can purchase the book on Amazon here.

The back of the book has a fun interactive wheel. Your child can turn the wheel and create different emotions on the face. The kids loved it!

After we read Today I Feel Silly, the girls created puppets.

This time they colored their emotion faces and glued them on popsicle sticks. I thought it would be fun for the girls to put on a puppet show acting out the different emotions. They love to make up stories!

Related Read: Honest Review of the ToucanBox Subscription box

Afterwards, We played an emotions memory game.

Who doesn’t love memory! Plus it’s a great chance to teach becoming a team player and good sport.

Then the girls colored their “I feel Happy, Emotion Readers” and we read them together. The girls LOVED this book and read it several times. The packet also includes a maze (Miss B LOVES mazes) and a scrambled word activity.

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You can download the activity packet here!

Do you want to buy the book “Today I Feel Silly“? You can get it here!

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