Using Picture Book Characters to Help Children Identify Feelings and Emotions
One of the beautiful things about raising and working with children is being able to watch their personalities develop as they grow. What’s even more beautiful is knowing that as parents and educators we have the ability to help them develop strong social emotional skill sets.
Younger children sometimes have trouble expressing what they’re feeling. Just picture the child we’ve all seen at the grocery store in the middle a full-blown temper tantrum over a candy bar. There really is a reason behind it! The child just hasn’t yet learned how to understand what he’s feeling or how to express it in an acceptable way.
It also takes time for children to understand that other people have feelings too. Remember the temper tantrum? Children don’t always realize that their actions often impact other people’s feelings.
tips for using picture books to build social emotional awareness
Picture books are great tools for building social emotional awareness in children. Here are a few tips to help children begin to develop a better understanding of their emotions and the emotions of others.
Choose a book with vivid illustrations and several different characters. At the beginning of each school year, I like to read the book “The Recess Queen” by Alexis O’Neill. It quickly becomes a class favorite! I’m not sure if it’s Katie’s Sue’s self-confidence or her colorful clothes, but the children are always genuinely fall in love with this character!
Take some time to indicate the characters’ facial expressions on each page. In the book “The Recess Queen,” there’s a page where Mean Jean “bullied through the playground crowd” after Katie Sue started playing before her. I show my students the characters’ faces and ask them to make inferences on how the characters are feeling based on their facial expressions and their own experiences. We then talk about how they might feel if this happened to them or about a time when they felt this way themselves.
This naturally leads into a discussion about what Mean Jean could do to make better choices. I repeat this on several different pages, while discussing how the characters might be feeling based on their facial expressions. We also continue to discuss ways that Mean Jean could choose better options.
Continue the discussion. Throughout the year, help children to become aware of their own actions by referring to situations from the book. If an incident happens on the playground, I am able to remind the kids of the actions of Mean Jean and Katie Sue in The Recess Queen. We are able to discuss how the Katie Sue might have handled the situation. Then encourage the children to be more like Katie Sue. This way the child isn’t receiving negative attention for an undesirable behavior. He or she instead becomes part of the solution for by seeking to change how they respond the next time they are in a similar situation. After a few weeks, the kids start to recognize when one of their peers is being “a Katie Sue” and want to recognize them. They develop a sense of pride, and they also begin to feel that they are valued and important members of their class.
I encourage you to take some time during your read-alouds to discuss characters’ feelings. Children will begin to understand that everyone has feelings and that emotions can change in different situations. They’ll also begin to learn different strategies for working through those feelings in appropriate and acceptable ways. Now that is a good feeling!
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