Why are they crying when they are happy?
Why are they shouting? Are they excited or angry?
Emotions are a complicated realm for little ones’ minds to comprehend. They are learning to understand their own feelings and how to act in response, as well as attempting to ‘read’ the emotions of others. Even as adults that can be an incredibly tricky task!
When children learn to read, it’s WAY more than simply learning the words. They have to understand what’s happening in the text, what characters are doing, thinking, feeling so they can understand and relate to the actions of those characters. This can then help them understand story structure and plot development as their reading develops in later years as well as helping make sensible predictions about what might happen next.
REAL STORY
When ‘reading’ Hug (by Jez Alborough) with my daughter who was 2 at the time, I asked her what she thought might happen in the story. We had already looked at the first few pictures. She thought the Bobo was happy and that he would have an ice cream. Whilst for her age, this was a perfectly reasonable prediction, she had misjudged the emotions involved and so could not understand what Bobo might do next.
We recently revisited the book to create our How to Read a Wordless Book video. She now 4 years old and has developed a very strong empathetic side. She is very caring and can read the emotions of others well. When looking at the book, she understood that Bobo was sad and could tell me why!
“He is sad. He doesn’t got his mummy, but look. Those animals do have a mummy. That is so sad”
Cue her crying, because she is a very sensitive little soul. After promising her it was a happy ending and having a cuddle, we were back to the task in hand. She made the prediction that he would keep looking until he found his mummy because he wouldn’t want to stay sad.
Amazing. She understood HOW he felt, WHY he felt it, WHAT he might do about it. Her understanding and inference of the illustrations were impressive. But this doesn’t just happen overnight.
Emotion games
Here are some ideas to help your child have a stronger understanding of emotions:
Emotion cards
Scenario or Role-play games
Freeze frame
Reading a picture
Here are some ideas to help your child read pictures successfully:
Scenario or Role-play games
Freeze frame
Inference cards