‘Dinosaurs on the loose!’
Speech and Language Activity:
Emotional dinosaurs
Activity Target
For the children to be able to understand, name and show different emotions.
Preparation for the activity
Print out the coloured dinosaurs and cut out and stick them on cards for your little ones to use.
Activity instructions
Hold up the red dinosaur, and tell the children that red is for showing anger. Ask the child “can you show me angry?” (Make angry faces, clench your fists and stomp around the room).
Activity instructions
Hold up the green dinosaur, tell the children that green is for showing happiness. Ask the child “can you show me happy?” (Make smiley faces, hop, skip and twirl around the room)
Activity instructions
Hold up the blue dinosaur, tell the children that blue is for showing sadness. Ask the child “can you show me sad?” (Put your head down, sad faces, walk slowly around the room)
Additional activities
Advanced emotions
Hold up the yellow dinosaur, tell the children that yellow is for showing when we feel unsettled, this could mean we feel nervous, scared, shy or excited. Our tummies might feel funny, to help us know what emotion we are feeling we would have to look at what we are doing. So, I might be excited when it is my birthday or nervous about doing something for the first time. Let’s practice, show me “nervous”. (Repeat this for scared, shy, and excited)
During each discussion make sure you talk about how each emotion feels. This includes what our bodies feel and look like. Remember, everyone experiences emotions differently (this is the sensory system interoception) so make sure you listen and validate the answers the children give to you. Can the children give you examples of a time that they have felt the emotions that you have discussed? As an extension, you can also talk about ways to manage each emotion, such as taking a deep breath when you are angry or talking to a grown-up. Finish off by asking the children “How do you feel today?”. Ask them to point to the dinosaur that shows how they feel.
Let’s put this into practice with a game.
Dance Freeze
Play the music from our adventure ‘Dinosaurs on the loose!’ and hold up a dinosaur e.g the red dinosaur. Children must move around the room being angry dinosaurs – stomping and roaring! Shout freeze and pause the music. The children must keep their angry pose and make comments on how you can tell they are angry such as their facial expressions.
Now hold up a different dinosaur and repeat the activity. If you are using the yellow dinosaur the children might be expressing different emotions. One child could be excited and the other might be scared. Talk to the children about how their bodies are moving and ask what their emotions are.
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