If you have a toddler or early preschool age child in your home; you are no stranger to the challenges of this age group. While these little ones can be a lot of fun, this stage comes with many challenges as they learn to regulate their emotions and gain impulse control. Toddlers are known for their tantrums! Their brains are growing at a rapid speed as they reach the early stages of social, emotional and language development. Tantrums are a toddlers way to respond, express, and manage these new feelings. That is why it is a critical time to start teaching little ones how to recognize, label and regulate these strong emotions. As both a mother of three and licensed professional counselor, I utilize a handful of resources, books and toys to help my children learn emotional intelligence at a young age.
BEST BOOKS
Books are awesome tools for helping young children learn emotional literacy skills. Through stories and fun characters little ones learn what feelings look like; as well as have models for how to react to emotions. Reading a book together provides the perfect opportunity to engage in conversation about feelings.
- Little Monkey Calms Down (Read Aloud – Video Option)
- My First Emotions Book (Read Aloud – Video Option)
- The Color Monster Book (Read Aloud – Video Option)
- The Way I feel (Read Aloud – Video Option)
- The Calm Down Jar (Read Aloud – Video Option)
TOOLS – TOYS
Children learn through play, so it’s important to mee them on their level for best opportunities to learn and grow. The Emotions Coin Drop by Solobo Toys is one of my favorites. If you aren’t familiar with Solobo Toys, they are a Montessori-inspired educational children’s toy company that come highly recommended by pediatric specialists including: speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and teachers. Their toys encourage natural speech development through play. Here’s a video that show cases the toy a little more.
The Emotions Coin Drop is an interactive way to start conversations about emotions from a young age. It features six colorful coins that each represent a feeling: happy, sad, angry, surprised, silly, and anxious. This toy is designed to boost a kid’s hand-eye coordination, fine motor Skill’s, memory building, language development and problem-solving skills. And, the Learn & Drop is a Montessori-inspired educational toy that has the most precise and comprehensive resources to allow children to master basic preschool concepts for language, counting, basic geometric shapes, fruit and vegetable names, birds and animals sounds and color names. It is a great learning tool to engage a child in a hands-on activity. More information: https://solobotoys.com/ and available on Amazon.
We really love this toy. I enjoy singing songs like If You’re Happy and You Know It. It’s also the perfect tool for making faces and acting out emotions with the visual cues of the coins. It’s so adorable to watch my little three years old face as he expresses different feelings.
***Thank you Solobo for sending us a sample to test out and write about.***
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