You can read a book, but did you know that you can also read a face? A face can tell you what someone is feeling. In this expressive photo-essay, simple text and photographs introduce basic emotions – happy, grumpy, thoughtful, and more – and how people show them. Whether shared with a group, parents, or a counselor-individually or in a class-this title provides the tools to facilitate discussion about children and their feelings."― School Library Journal
When I was five, I refused to go to kindergarten. I declared it was for babies. I already knew how to read, but what really bothered me the most was that the kids mixed up the paintbrushes and colors at the easel so there was never true blue, red, yellow or green. Every time my teacher turned her back, I left the room and headed to the first grade class diagonally across the hall. Luckily, I had a friend there who happily shared her desk with me until the teacher noticed and sent me back to kindergarten. After many successful escapes, a trip to the principal and some testing, I was officially moved to that first grade class with beautiful autumn leaves painted on the door.
In my classroom over the years, I have worked with several children who have serious difficulty reading the emotions of others and responding to them appropriately. In these contexts, we often have to engage in explicit "training" to help all of our students because increasingly aware of physical signals that can help us read the emotions of others based on their words, their facial expressions, and their body language. Lots of Feelings is a wonderful aid in this process, and a text enjoyed by all children. Showing the diverse expressions of children feeling different emotions, we are able to "analyze" the looks on children's faces and draw conclusions about how to read and respond to such expressions.
This book uses simple text and close up pictures of children's faces showing different emotions. I used this book with first grade students to see if they could "read" the faces. I covered up some of the names of feelings to see if they could name the emotion. I used this book as a conversation starter with the questions, "Why do you think this person is feeling...?" or "Have you ever felt this way?" I would recommend this book to parents and teachers to help children better understand different kinds of feelings and what those feelings look like.
The repetitive language found in Lots of Feelings helps support the development of 2-3 year old child’s vocabulary skills. Through the repetition of words or phrases ensure comprehension and allows for the child to build upon existing knowledge by making connections between other words. Through reading and talking about the text, provides opportunities for the child to use their expressive vocabulary, which in turn introduces the child to new vocabulary.
This was a very effective book for my pre-school age grandson who is learning to identify emotions. Many books use cartoons which really don't work well for children who have not developed strong abstract thinking skills. This photo-based book, however, was perfect to "label" and talk about emotions. A couple of the more complex emotions were a bit difficult to identify without the included description, but almost all were excellent. I would strongly recommend this book.
Good pictures of real kids expressing emotions. One favorite part is the "loving" page because when Grace sees the picture of the people hugging, we get hugs too! I also like the front and back ends because it lists several hundred emotion words.