Emotional activities for preschoolers to promote healthy self-regulation strategies and skills for coping with big feelings and fostering resilience.
Social Emotional Activities For Preschoolers to Foster Resilience
[Ad] With so many big changes afoot it would be understandable – expected, even – for our little ones to display some challenging behaviour.
As it happens, my two have continued to adapt fantastically well so far…but I’m anticipating some difficulties to come, and so I’ve gathered some social emotional activities for preschoolers and early years learning ideas we can try at home – before the need arises.
What Is Social-Emotional Development?
Social-emotional development is the process of gaining the necessary skills to make and maintain good relationships, and function within and contribute to society. Some of these critical social skills include:
- Communication skills,
- Empathy and compassion,
- Recognising, identifying, and processing emotions,
- Impulse control.
Many of these vital skills are picked up from parents and caregivers and practiced through role play, but we can help our young children to establish and finesse these competencies with activities designed for their success.
What Does Normal Social-Emotional Development Look Like?
You’ll likely be glad to know that it’s different for all children! As with most conversations about ‘normal’, there’s a wide spectrum.
Some young children are shy, others are boisterous, and more still are a combination of both depending on the circumstances – all normal. In much the same way, social development occurs at different rates and it’s entirely expected to find some children progressing more quickly than others, without it being any cause for concern.
For the most part, toddlers tend to prefer playing alone, moving on to side-by-side play as they get older. Cooperative play comes around preschool age when they begin to develop negotiating skills; sharing before this time is not developmentally appropriate, and may take until seven or eight – also normal!
When it comes to social emotional development, your child’s natural temperament will lay the foundations: some children people feel things very deeply, and being highly sensitive inevitably leads to big emotions, which in turn makes processing and managing them more difficult.
If you feel your child could benefit from additional support with managing their feelings, BetterHelp has therapists specialising in different areas, including parenting, and may be able to assist.
Personal, Social, and Emotional Development Activities For Early Years
This is where social emotional activities for preschoolers and reception age children can be hugely beneficial.
All children have to learn to regulate their behaviour appropriately; it’s possibly one of the toughest skills they’ll learn – but it’s also one of the most rewarding for their wellbeing.
The Value of Self Regulation Strategies for Kids
Equipping children with the tools to manage their impulses and exhibit a degree of control when they may feel out of control is one of our hardest jobs as parents. When we’re in the midst of a difficult phase it can be a daunting task, but future success and happiness are dependent upon learning these critical skills and strategies.
Keep in mind that encouraging a child to bury their feelings is not helpful and is not the goal; it’s about helping them to express and channel those big uncomfortable feelings in safe, appropriate, positive ways.
The Value of Emotional Regulation Activities for Kids
One of the most important ways we can support children in this area of development is through helping them to identify and label their feelings – and modelling appropriate reactions to those big emotions.
Today I’m sharing seven social-emotional activities for preschoolers and reception age kids, to help support this critical developmental phase and increase resilience in your children.
9 Emotions Activities For Preschoolers
1. Preschool Books About Feelings
Reading with our children is one of the absolute best things we can do for them, and The Great Big Book About Feelings is ideal as a reference point for discussions about feelings.
The first couple of pages of the book show faces with different expressions and encourage children to determine and label what each character may be experiencing.
2. Children’s Yoga
I mentioned recently that Pixie has been enjoying following yoga workouts on YouTube, and we continue to promote this as it’s a fantastic way to help her calm after a long day at school. Yoga is wonderful for emptying the mind of stress and worry, and refocusing attention on the body’s senses, which also feeds into mindfulness. If meditation is your thing then yoga is a lovely precursor which goes hand in hand.
3. A Diary or Journal
Regularly filling out a diary or journal can be a really powerful way to help your child recognise, identify, process, and regulate their feelings.
I’ve had some problems with my little girl over the last couple of years in this regard, and in response I created a journal to help her, incorporating the things I thought would benefit her. I’ve since closed my shop and am making all contents into printables, available free to subscribers! (Check back soon as I add more!)
The journal primarily consists of gratitude pages, because practising gratitude is an excellent way to promote positivity and wellbeing (read more here).
But sometimes kids just want to switch off and be absorbed in a mindful task, which is equally vital to their emotional development. For that reason I also included colouring pages, space to doodle, and more.
It’s widely understood that the best way to achieve happiness is to practice gratitude and kindness. There’s no more valuable a lesson to teach our children, than to be grateful and compassionate.
These journal printables are designed to do two things:
- Encourage your child to acknowledge and appreciate the wonderful things they have in their life.
- Think about how they can be a positive influence on the world and those around them.
Suitable for ages 4 – 9, the concept is simple: gently guide focus towards gratitude and empathy, so those values becomes instilled as our children’s natural moral compass.
Nurturing these life lessons in your child is incredibly powerful, not only for improving and strengthening their relationships with others, but also for building the foundations for good mental health and wellbeing throughout their life:
Mindfulness and appreciation of the good in our lives underpins contentment.
The printables include positive sections to complete, focusing on a variety of areas such as family, friendships, home, and school. There are also colouring pages, dot-to-dots, plain doodle pages, and lined pages for journaling.
The layout of the workbook allows your child to complete sections in their own time and at their own pace, and encourages them to look at all areas of their life initially, then focus on how they’re grateful over a period of time, before returning to focusing on the specific areas of their life again.
The principal behind this structure is to enable you to discuss with your child the changes in their life from when they begin to when they complete the journal.
To avoid burnout or overwhelm, written pages are broken up with space to draw and get creative, and pages contain illustrations which can be coloured.
4. Feelings Flashcards
These are great for encouraging children to identify and name feelings, forging a deeper understanding of the language of emotions, but also with regards to what those feelings look like.
5. Magnetic Emotions Game
What child doesn’t love magnetic games? This is perfect for little creatives and teaches children how to ‘read’ facial expressions to understand what others are feeling – great for promoting empathy.
6. Exploring Feeling Words and Language
This can be as simple or novel as you wish to make it. The idea is simply to broaden your child’s vocabulary and comprehension of a range of words related to emotions. You could:
- Draw faces and describe them using as many synonyms as possible;
- Create a list of feeling words and sort them into positive and negative emotions;
- Write feeling words in bubble writing and have your child colour them in happy/sad/angry colours;
- Match faces with feeling words;
- Group feeling words together with their antonyms.
7. Emotions Board
Make your own or buy one which can be reused. This helps your child to show you how they feel if/when they’re struggling for the words. You could also talk about how their friends have been feeling at school that day to promote empathy.
8. Grouping Emotions With Behaviours
Using written feeling words and behaviour words, have your child group together which emotions drive which actions. This is a fantastic activity for helping your child to understand why their peers may behave in a certain way they don’t like, encouraging empathy – and also a perfect opportunity to teach more appropriate responses to difficult feelings.
9. Role Play
As I mentioned earlier, role play is hugely powerful for children. It allows them to explore feelings, responses, actions, and consequences in a non-threatening, safe environment. And much of what they do will be based around and influenced by what they see and experience, which is why the way we model coping strategies is so vital.
I hope these social-emotional activities for preschoolers and young children will help you to support your child with their emotional development; do you have any suggestions I’ve not made here?
Cassie
Thursday 12th of September 2019
Really useful post. Will bear some of these ideas in mind for G. Glad to hear Pixie has settled well. G is doing better than I expected too. Like you tho I’m waiting for the book to drop. I know it’s coming as they realise this is their almost forever now x