The Color Monster: A Story about Emotions: 1

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What started out as a daunting day, turns in to a vibrant and educational journey for the colour monster. Together with the little girl they have organized his emotions and they are no longer tangled up. His world is much clearer. Together can you think of other emotions that the colour monster might have but has not shared in this story? What colour might they be? Let’s explore colour some more through messy play! The children might like to experiment with paint or water and food dye by mixing colours to see what new colours they can make. What colours can they create and what feelings do they link with their new colours?

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! Love the collage-y illustrations of this picture book, but the text has some troubling issues. While it is vital to teach children to identify their emotions, it is just as important to help them understand that it is normal to feel more than one single emotion at a time, even about the same thing/person/idea. furthermore, labeling emotions with specific colors doesn't work as a one-size-fits-all solution, since color is a very personal experience; people feel very differently about the same color. Telling children that blue is sadness will confuse children who experience blue as tranquility, or power, or curiosity, or any number of other emotions. This book goes so far as to tell children how to experience certain emotions: Did you know that Twinkl uploads hundreds of resources every month? Make sure you don’t miss out on any and sign-up today! For more Autism emotions activities, look here. You might also like this Restorative Practice Activity or this lovely Palette of Feelings Art Activity with Feelings Monsters. More resources like this 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.

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Understanding our own emotions and the emotions of others is called Theory of Mind (ToM) . With research highlighting links between ToM and language skills, it has become a hot topic within speech and language therapy. ToM starts to develop quite early on and can be encouraged by talking to our children about their emotions and the emotions of others. From around 4 years of age children might start to develop skills in thinking about how another person feels. Using books at this stage can be lots of fun and help them on their way to understanding emotions. The colour monster 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. 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. Here’s hoping this activity brings you and your clients some superpowers to help untangle those messy, chaotic, and confusing feelings!

The colourful monsters on the social-emotional worksheets are there to encourage children to open up about their emotions and how they are feeling. Put your little one’s memory skills to the test with this sweet monster card match-up! Shuffle the cards so that the pairs of emotions are separated. Allow learners to study the card placement before you flip them upside down and then challenge them to find the matching pairs. His emotions are cleverly depicted by colours. This little stumped soul is bemused and wearing all his emotions (colours) at the same time. The colours are intertwined and swirled together in a jumbled-up mess. Picture your child’s face and hands after a painting session. It is quite clear that this little guy needs a bit of help and along comes a trusted friend to lead the way. Remember to read The Colour Monster Goes to School and try our related ideas too! Teaching Ideas and Resources: English 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!

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This feelings monster worksheet is a lovely way to encourage children to talk about feelings and emotions. The Color Monster by Anna Llenas teaches abour big emotions in a simple way for young children. In the story, an adorable monster has mixed-up feelings and the author helps to sort them out. Happiness is like the sun, anger is a burning fire, and calm is like the leaves swaying in the wind. Young children may not be able to tell you exactly what they are feeling, but they can use the concepts in this book to help express themselves. Read The Color Monster book to students. Take another look through the book – noticing the color used to represent each emotion and how the illustrator use texture and imagery to represent each emotion?

For an even better way to find KS2 resources, discover tailored suggestions, and much more - visit the KS2 resource HUB! GO TO KS2 HUB What about other people? Together can you think of how other people in the family feel and how they show it? What colour are their emotions? 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.) Taking time to validate our learners makes them feel seen, heard, and cared for. Label an assortment of jars using a series of emotional faces. Over the course of a week, have your learners drop items, or their names, into the jar that they feel best represents their feeling that day. At the end of the week help them tally up the items and analyze their predominant emotion. Social-emotional learning is just as important as all the other topics you teach. Making time for it can be a bit of a challenge, so here are some of Twinkl’s top tips to help you encourage social-emotional learning:For an even better way to find KS1 resources, discover tailored suggestions, and much more - visit the KS1 resource HUB! GO TO KS1 HUB 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. This animated video is wonderful for introducing the ways in which we lose our cool. It helps little minds understand that it’s perfectly normal to do so from time to time, but also encourages them to think about how they might rein in those big feelings.

There is also space for children to write about their feelings monster. Invite children to write about how their monster is feeling and make links to their own feelings and emotions. Have they ever felt the same way as their feelings monster? Meet the Mood Monsters PowerPoint - this PowerPoint is a fun, light-hearted way to teach children about different moods and emotions. 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. The format of the book allows for a conversation with children about managing their feelings 'putting them into bottles' and discussing why they might be feeling a particular emotion. A ‘I feel … when?’ worksheets (for children to design their own colour monsters and think about when they feel different emotions.

What other early writing activities could children try?

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?