The Color Monster: A Story about Emotions: 1

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It’s important to remind young learners that, at times, we may feel more than 1 emotion, or may not even be able to verbalize how we’re feeling at all! This hands-on activity enforces this notion visually by having learners attach colorful felt squares to a Color Monster cut-out.

In this story, yellow refers to happiness, red is for anger and blue is linked to sadness. Do you agree with those colour choices? Why? This resource is great for use in line with Scotland's Pre-Birth to Three guidance. Take a look at more resources here! Introduce the colors and feelingsin the story. Talk about different feelings you may have in different situation. For example, ask "Have you ever felt sad? Tell me about it". Then introduce this story about a monster whose feelings are all mixed-up! "He doesn't know how he feels. Let's find out more about Color Monster's feelings."Review story vocabulary. Here are some words in the story you may want to define: emotions, jumbled, separate, shines, twinkles, happiness, sadness, lonely, washes over, alone, burns, stamp out, unfair, disappear, fear, afraid, courage, shadows, calm, quiet, swaying, breathe, peace, different. (I would choose just a few.) Why not create a display of the children's feelings monsters? You could use these Emotions and Feelings Photo Display Cards to support the children as they complete the sheet and display alongside the feelings monsters to further prompt discussion. We are long time fans of The Color Monster book by Anna Llena– with it featuring on our 21 Best Books about Feelings and Emotions and 101 Social Skills Books for Kids booklists and one of our earliest Social Emotional Learning posts – 4 Ways to Boost Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence. This fun activity has learners practicing their reading skills as they work to match the speech bubble to the correct monster. They will also employ fine motor skills as they use scissors to cut the monsters and speech bubbles out. This book is a wonderful story about a “Color Monster” who is full of mixed up colors and emotions. A little girl takes the monster by the hand and gently helps the Color Monster untangle and separate out all of these feelings and put them into jars.

By using cardboard, yarn, felt, a marker, and glue, little learners can design and craft their very own Color Monsters! They can use these creatures to put on an at-home, or in-class, puppet show and better yet; use the color monsters to help them verbalize different emotions. The colour monster book provides a lovely fun read with lots of talking points. You can try some of the below: This activity has its roots in social-emotional learning skills. These skills aid little ones in developing self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills. Have your students draw 2 jars; one in which they will write a happy memory, and one in which they record a sad memory. Once your learners have completed the writing task, invite them to share their memories with the class and connect with others. Have your students identify basic emotions as they match assorted colors and emotions to the correct monster. Once they’ve matched everything correctly, they can spend time coloring in their worksheet and, in small groups, discussing when they feel certain emotions.Play Simon Says with the Color Monster’s help and visually act out a series of emotions! For example, using the little pink monster displayed below, the teacher will call out, “The Color Monster is in love”, and students will give themselves or a friend a big hug! These feelings monster writing activities are ideal for use during an 'All About Me' or ‘Ourselves' topic to encourage children to develop an understanding of their own feelings and those of others. Try providing the writing worksheets alongside pencils for children to use independently. They might like to practise with some Mark-Making Activity Ideas for Early Years to help get in to the swing of writing. The sheets could also be used as an adult-led PSED or literacy activity. Meet the Mood Monsters PowerPoint - this PowerPoint is a fun, light-hearted way to teach children about different moods and emotions. Children will love to develop their emotional language skills in your Feelings and Emotions area when it is themed around the famous Colour Monsters!

Whilst giving the feelings a name, she explains what the feeling might make you want to do e.g. “anger can make you want to stomp”, thus helping children to recognize and identity with the different feelings. This could act as a great prompt to get your child to talk about what anger or another emotion makes them want to do. Look again at the book, focusing on one emotion at a time. Have each child choose a square from the corresponding pile of colored emotions squares to paste into their jar. Another thing that is just fantastic about this book is the use of metaphor. It compares anger to a fire you might want to stomp out, sadness to a rainy day, and calm like leaves swaying in the wind. If you are doing any sort of metaphor work with kids this is a GREAT book to get the wheels turning! Introduce the story, ‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas or listen to it being read here. There are some questions in the clip after the story which might help to scaffold a discussion around the story.All of our resources are made by experienced teachers and align with the Australian Curriculum. So you can rest easy knowing that you are using suitable and reliable resources to teach the children in your class. How to encourage social-emotional learning