[Topic on Habits of Mind: Respond appropriately to others feelings (Kirthana) ]

Started to think..... firstly, what are feelings? Started to daily jot down about my feelings through out the day. How am I expressing my feeling, or do I express them at all to anyone? How do I respond to my own feelings and others feelings was a huge brainstorm....Whooo!

Feelings are an important part of YOU. In order to live fully and effectively, you need many sources of information (e.g., your senses, your thoughts, your perceptions) to guide you, motivate you, and help you make sense of things.

For example:

1) To feel sadness in response to loss

2) To feel happiness in response to something desirable

Two students experience the same event on scoring 90% on a test, but interpreting that event in dramatically different ways.

 

One student's interpretation might be, "Wonderful! That was a tough test, I studied hard, and it paid off!"

Now, imagine the other student's interpretation to be, "Oh no! I didn't get the top score. I'm never going to get into grad school and that's terrible."

 

Probably, the first student's emotional response will be positive; the second student's negative. The event was the same for both; the differing interpretations led to the differing emotional responses.

 

Definition:  There is no specific definition. Words or even silence, at times, that express empathy and improve the state of mind with a sense of esteem, empowering them, and selfness not giving any negative feelers is responding appropriately. This ensures that the children are guided to healthy emotional growth with a good emotional vocabulary.

 

If you value their emotions, they will too.  

 

Example:

A Surf Excel advertisement...two kids walking back from school and the little girl falls in a puddle of muddy water and starts crying. The little boy then plays dramatically and falls on to the puddle and starts beating into the puddle and he gets all muddy. He gets up and tells the girl "It (as in the "puddle" is saying 'Sorry'). The girl gets her smile back on her face.

 

The boy's action and response made her feel better. What better way, we could have said or done anything. Action speaks louder than words.

 

Activity 1: Play different kinds of music that categorize sad, happy, celebration, patriotic, angry, silly, and encouraging emotions. Let the child explore each of the tunes and recognize the emotions behind each of the music would help the child to understand different emotions.

 

Activity 2: Making a painting that depicts an evening in the park with the following pictures:

- A bunch of kids playing making a circle (emotion: happy)

- Children playing the slide and waiting for their turn (emotion: patience)

- Child playing the swing, while another child crying for the swing (emotion: sad)

- A dog chasing a child (emotion: fear/ afraid)

- A child at the ice cream stand (Emotion: excitement)

 

Many more scenarios that show frustration, angry, crying, boredom and other emotions can be introduced.

 

Make small placards with all these emotions and get them to tag these placard to the painting.