A Little Book About Feelings Teaches Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy is not something we hear about in the media.  Sure, we hear about the importance of literacy and encouraging a love of reading and writing for our children.  But the ability to understand our emotions and express our feelings is an important skill that needs to be learned in childhood.  Emotional literacy is defined as the ability to recognize, understand and appropriately express our emotions.  Feel.org states that becoming emotionally literate is learning the alphabet, grammar and vocabulary of our emotional lives. (Source: www.feel.org).

A recent poll by USA Today showed that when parents were asked what they most wanted to change in their children’s schools, 75% of the respondents replied emotional literacy, though not by name.  The most frequent response at 36% was the need for more school counselors – a need alleviated by emotional literacy education.

A few months ago, I came across a wonderful company called The Mother Company that addresses and teaches emotional literacy in a fun and educational format. Working with the country’s foremost experts, The Mother Company’s aim is to help teach children how to recognize, express, and move through their feelings. Through the use of animated segments, art activities, original songs, and using real kids on their award-winning show, Ruby’s Studio, they provide a fun and supportive environment for children to learn about feelings and how best to express them. My six-year-old loves to read their books and talk about what makes her happy or sad. I found their apps and books to be very helpful in teaching her how to understand and label her feelings.

So in today’s feature of The Latest and Greatest – I wanted to feature their wonderful app called A Little Book About Feelings by The Mother Company and developed by PicPocket Books.  This app is such a wonderful addition to your digital library as it touches on this important life skill that children need to be taught.  Ruby meets us on the first page (she is the star of the award-winning RUBY’S STUDIO: THE FEELINGS SHOW) and asks us how we are feeling today and describes all the different feelings we might feel.  The animations are simple but really add to the overall vibe of the story.  The reader is told that everyone in the whole world has feelings including babies, big people, little people and even pets!   The story goes on to describe how feelings work and how best to express how you feel.  A Little Book About Feelings is a wonderful educational tool to help parents teach their children about how to express their feelings.

Imagine if more children and adults could talk about and handle their emotions in a healthy and non-aggressive manner. Here’s to supporting our children in learning emotional literacy!

You can read more about this ground-breaking site and show at www.themotherco.com.

How do you help your children express and understand what they are feeling?

References:

The Emotional Literacy Campaign at feel.org. www.feel.org/emotional_literacy.php

Center on the Social and Emotional Foundation for Early Learning. Brief 21 Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children: Labeling Emotions by G. Joseph,P.Strain. M.M.Ostrosky.

The Mother Company at www.themotherco.com

Some screen shots from the iPhone and iPad App A Little Book About Feelings: