Classroom Feelings Lessons

I'm excited to make my first blog post of the school year!  I have been privileged to have completed two lessons in each classroom.  It has been wonderful to get back in the classrooms after the summer break and get to know all of the new students and became reacquainted with all of the familiar faces. In all of the classrooms, the students have been learning about feelings.  We have spent time naming feelings, practicing what various feelings look like on our face and talking about how the different feelings make us feel inside.  In Kindergarten I read a brand new book entitled, In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek.  This story is a great way to introduce feelings to young children and the illustrations are beautiful.  The book starts with these words:

"Sometimes my heart feels like a big yellow star, shiny and bright.
I smile from ear to ear and twirl around so fast,
I feel as if I could take off into the sky.
This is when my heart is happy."

Happiness, sadness, bravery, anger, shyness . . . our hearts can feel so many feelings! Some make us feel as light as a balloon, others as heavy as an elephant. In My Heart explores a full range of emotions, describing how children feel physically, inside. With language that is lyrical but also direct, all children will be empowered by this new vocabulary and it helps them better be able to practice articulating and identifying their own emotions. After I read the story to the students they each had a chance to express the feeling that they were having in their heart at that moment in time.