The Colour Monster

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This activity has its roots in social-emotional learning skills. These skills aid little ones in developing self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills. Have your students draw 2 jars; one in which they will write a happy memory, and one in which they record a sad memory. Once your learners have completed the writing task, invite them to share their memories with the class and connect with others.

Practice drawing faces that show different emotions. Can you draw a happy face? Can you draw an angry face? Use a mirror to see how your facial expression can change to show emotions.

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This animated video is wonderful for introducing the ways in which we lose our cool. It helps little minds understand that it’s perfectly normal to do so from time to time, but also encourages them to think about how they might rein in those big feelings.

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The book also emphasizes being able to feel and honor whatever feeling comes up and tell us that it is OK to feel all of these feelings, it is okay to listen to our bodies, and it is okay to cry! So powerful, especially for young people who often get flooded and want to repress feelings. Love the collage-y illustrations of this picture book, but the text has some troubling issues. While it is vital to teach children to identify their emotions, it is just as important to help them understand that it is normal to feel more than one single emotion at a time, even about the same thing/person/idea. furthermore, labeling emotions with specific colors doesn't work as a one-size-fits-all solution, since color is a very personal experience; people feel very differently about the same color. Telling children that blue is sadness will confuse children who experience blue as tranquility, or power, or curiosity, or any number of other emotions. This book goes so far as to tell children how to experience certain emotions: Add googley eyes to any art projectsto make fun monsters. Here is an example of a great googley eye monster: Coffee filter monsters Think of other emotions and choose colours that might represent them (e.g. frustration, disgust, envy). At the start of the story, the Colour Monster is feeling confused. When have you felt confused? What did you do in this situation? What can we do when we feel confused in the future?

The next sheet is all about taking time to separate out and honor each feeling. With the My Feeling Jar worksheet you can clearly identify each feeling experienced and how much of each feeling. You can go deeper with young people and identify triggers, how they felt it in their bodies, warning signs of these feelings, and choices that might be helpful vs unhelpful to honor what is going on for them over the week. As an extension activity, the discussion could also focus on what things help when they are feeling sad, afraid or angry. Invite the children to discuss their feelings. Sometimes we can feel a bit mixed up like the Colour Monster. It might help to have a friend, older brother or sister or a trusted adult help the child to sort out their feelings at those times, just like the Colour Monster and the little girl. Talk about the things which make the children feel happy, sad, angry, fearful and calm and loved. Recap on the story of ‘The Colour Monster’. Parents may want to read the story again with the children or invite the children to tell them the story, using their own home-made monsters from last week’s resources.If you’re looking for a more advanced activity to pair with the reading of this wonderful book, then look no further! This activity requires students to listen to the story and then spend time completing this fill-in-the-blank worksheet; inferring the monster’s feelings from what they have heard. As a group, we discussed the interesting allocation of colour to the different emotions. Children who are particularly struggling could simply assign themselves a colour for their feeling. However, I wonder how useful this colour allocation is, as some children might have a favourite colour associated with a negative emotion.