The Preschool 1 children have been talking about the zones of regulation and what emotion fits in each zone. To expand on this discussion, I brought out mirrors for the children to look at their facial expressions. We practiced making a happy, sad and angry face. Once we made the different faces, I asked the group to look in the mirrors to see what their faces look like. As they continued to look at their faces we discussed what their eyes look like and what their mouth looks like. For example, when we are happy our mouth curves up towards our eyes and our eyes can look a little bigger. When we are angry our mouths can be small and tight. We continued to talk about how our bodies are feeling when we are feeling the different emotions. We continued to expand on this activity by bringing the mirrors over to the craft table. Cam looked in the mirror and said, “I see Cam.” George enjoyed making different faces while he was looking into his mirror. We created our own faces using paper, crayons and glue. We used our fine motor skills by using a pincer grasp to hold onto the crayons. As we were colouring Skylar said, “I’m going to draw a happy face on the ears.” We added eyes and mouths to our plates once we finished colouring them in. As Ellie was colouring in a paper eye she said, “look my eye is red.” Lily arrange the eyes and mouth on her face and once it was where she wanted it she was excited to show me. We discussed what makes us feel the different emotions. Alivianna said, “Emerson makes me happy.” The children were excited to share with each other what makes them feel happy. This activity helped with us gaining a better understanding of our emotions and how our bodies feel. The Preschool children built on their sense of belonging and well being by discussing what makes them feel happy, sad or angry.
