Speech and Language Therapy

Hello Families!  I’m excited to get into the classrooms with your children.  This week we are focusing on feelings.  These are the books that I did during large group in the classroom.  

The first one had a picture of an animal expressing a feeling, they had to guess what feeling and then I showed them a picture of the animal in a scene and we talked about why they might be feeling that way.  The second is an interactive book where the students had to match the sentence strips to the picture.  “The girl/boy is ________.”  This also works on expanding sentences as well as pronouns.  “The boy is happy”  “He is happy.” 
After the stories we had a motion dance based around different feelings.  I modeled the action for each feeling, then the second round I had them try to remember what we do for each feeling and then we did the dance with various music and they had to recall the motions.  
Happy=march and smile
Sad=move low and slow
Excited=Jump
Mad=stomp feet
Tired= crawl on hands and knees
Nervous= tiptoe
Silly= do a silly dance

During therapy time in the classroom we worked on various language and articulation goals while making faces on mats with playdoh.  Below are some tips on working on talking about and expressing feelings at home.  Here is a link to a video about feelings that we did as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1NIWCr0R-k

Teach Your Child Simple Feeling Words
Teach your preschooler basic feeling words such as happy, mad, sad and scared. Older kids can benefit from learning more complex feeling words such as frustrated, disappointed, and nervous.
A great way to help kids learn about feelings is to discuss how various characters in books or TV shows may feel. Pause to ask, “How do you think he feels right now?” Then, discuss the various feelings the character may be experiencing and the reasons why.
This also teaches kids empathy. Young children think the world revolves around them so it can be an eye opening experience for them to learn that other people have feelings too.
If your child knows that pushing his friend to the ground may make his friend mad and sad, he will be less likely to do it.
Create Opportunities to Talk About Feelings
Show kids how to use feeling words in their daily vocabulary. Model how to express feelings by taking opportunities to share your feelings.
Say, “I feel sad that you don’t want to share your toys with your sister today. I bet she feels sad too.”
Each day, ask your child, “How are you feeling today?” With young children, use a simple chart with smiley faces if that helps them to pick a feeling and then discuss that feeling together. Talk about the types of things influence your child’s feelings.
Point out when you notice your child is likely feeling a particular feeling. For example, say, “You look really happy that we are going to be eating ice cream,” or “It looks like you are getting frustrated playing with those blocks.” https://www.verywell.com/how-to-teach-kids-about-feelings-1095012

Looking forward to a great year! 
Lorraine Jeter, SLPA   (aka Miss Lorraine)