My Book of Feelings

We did our new routines for the afternoon -- calendar (for counting), and then singing the "Stand Up and Turn Around" song to let every child have the chance to move around before sitting down. I'm happy today because Sophie and Phillip said pass for their turns yesterday, but both of them were willing to participate today! Hurray~

Then we sang "If You're Happy and You Know It", because I'm teaching them about feelings today. I read them the book "The Very Bad Day", and we discussed the feelings of happiness and sadness. I showed them the different faces that represent different emotions, and then asked them to make those faces -- happy, sad, silly, angry, excited, afraid. I think "afraid" is a difficult one, so I decided to take it out of the booklet. It was funny when the kids were making noises with their faces. For example, when they made the silly faces, they made silly noises. When they made the angry faces, they made grumpy noise! They got pretty noisy, but I couldn't be mad at them 'cause it's so natural for them! I reminded them to make the face without the sound effects, and they quietened just a tiny bit. =P

Faces:


I started a sticker page for each of the students. I gave each of them a sticker yesterday because they were sitting so nicely during lesson time, but I knew that they'd lose it by the time they go home. So I decided to make a page for everyone to keep track of their stickers. For example, this one is Reya's. The first sticker is the first letter of her name. She was good today too, so I gave her an "E". I'm unsure about the award system, because I know that some educators are against it, believing that good behaviours should come from intrinsic motivation. But I hope that this would encourage them to pay more attention in class, and I'll try to do something education with the stickers that I give them, so it's not "just a treat".


I gave each child the pages of the "book of feelings", and asked them to trace the words. I put the faces on each page so that they would know what word they're tracing. It got a bit confusing when I was handing out the pages, because I didn't have time to sort it beforehand. With all the questions that the kids have and all the "can you help me?", I was a bit frustrated, and I let them know that. I told them how I felt, and that I needed time and quietness to sort through it, and it'd be helpful if they could be patient for a while. I guess it helped a bit, but I understand that they must be frustrated too, when they wanted help but had to wait for so long!

As they were working, I asked them to make different faces so I could take pictures of them. I explained that the pictures will be printed for tomorrow, so they can glue them onto the pages to make the booklet. Some of them are more expressive than others in terms of their facial expressions, but some made similar faces for "sad" and "angry", or "happy" and "excited"~ But they're all very cute, and it's funny when they couldn't hold their angry face for the pictures because they wanted to laugh!

Riley's bookcover:


Riley's "happy" page without photo:


Reya's "silly" page: