Managing emotions
Emotional regulation, the ability to recognise emotions and manage them independently, is an important skill for children to develop! At Horsham Nursery School we seek to support children to develop skills needed for emotional regulation. We recognise that there is no 'one size fits all' model to support children with this skill.
For our neurodivergent learners, we use visual emotion boards to support the recognition of emotions, as well as modelling what we might do when feeling a certain emotion. We support children to identify which emotion they are feeling, before using a familiar phrase to think about what to do.
If a child is feeling sad, we would use the 'sad' emotion board in the following way:
-Pointing to the emotion visual and naming it with or for the child "feel sad"
-Gesturing to the action visuals below "have a cuddle, read a book, or get a blanket?"
-Offer the child time to make a choice, or support them to make a choice together "feel sad, have a cuddle?" offering a cuddle
Please find the emotion boards linked below for you to use at home!