Early Childhood Activities To Promote Social Emotional Learning
Promoting social emotional learning at every age and stage is an essential part of raising and teaching our children. Focused attention on social emotional learning activities during early childhood and the preschool years can lay a firm foundation for our youngest learners to process their feelings in a healthy way and develop emotional competency skills that will help them navigate life long after the earliest years.
Looking for early childhood activities to promote social emotional learning, mindfulness, and emotional competency? Check out 14+ ideas, invitations to learn, and resources below!
I Am Every Good Thing
It's so important to focus on identifying when we need affirmations, and how it’s during the hardest moments that you usually forget who you truly are. When my son was in Kindergarten, I got to be a mystery reader in my his class and knew immediately this was the book I wanted to read to them. It was such a joy to speak life into a class of the sweetest most precious children, using one of my absolute favorite children’s books by Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James. When back at home, I paired my printable affirmation cards with this book as a learning extension that was a perfect match.
A Rainbow of Emotions
Connecting facial expressions with emotions is a great social emotional learning activity for young children. They enjoy copying the faces and labeling the feelings as they learn to process their big feelings. This beautiful setup from @storiesofbri used so many fantastic resources to do just that. It was so joyful to see my rainbow emotion cards in action, knowing they were truly helping her little one learn and grow!
Wren’s Nest Mindful Play
This beautiful story weaves together themes of family, the sanctity of nature, and life changes. It covers a range of emotions organically throughout the text, so it felt natural to pair this book with our emotion eggs and colorful pouch tops as sensory fillers. We also made binoculars out of toilet paper tubes so that we can watch the birds outside our own window, which is a mindfulness activity all in itself!
Literacy-Based Play
Emotion Vocabulary
Color Recognition
Mindfulness Strategies
Nature Appreciation
Counting & 1:1 Correspondence
Observation of the Natural World
Belly Scooting Body Regulation
If you’ve been following along with us, you know that I’ve been learning a LOT about sensory input and connected strategies to help with emotional dysregulation, particularly with regard to proprioceptive input. It’s been a steep learning curve for me to be able to help my younger son, but I am beyond grateful that I am gaining so much new knowledge in order to help my own and maybe somebody else’s child! I have had my eye out for these scooters ever since the OT suggested them to us, and thanks to a generous neighbor, snagged them as a gift from our local Buy Nothing page!
Helping kids recognize when their bodies, minds, or emotions are dysregulated, and then fostering an environment where there are choices available to help them regulate themselves is super essential, especially for our children with higher sensory needs. We think a lot about regulation strategies that help children be calm, quiet, and still, but for many kids, it’s the larger, high-energy physical movements that actually help many of them to calm their bodies down. Quite often, what shows up as defiance, aggression, or tantrums is actually an unfulfilled sensory need. When we look through this lens, there are so many things we can do for our kids, both proactively and in the moment, to help them regulate their emotions and bodies with less conflict and more compassion.
The Boy With Flowers In His Hair
What an absolutely poignant and heartfelt book about the power of friendship during times of struggle. When the main character goes through an unknown struggle and loses all his flowers, his friend creates paper flowers for him, until his own flowers begin to bloom again. With deep symbolism, the discussion options around this book are almost endless! We talked a lot about how struggles can be big or small, visible to others or invisible, and how sometimes when we struggle we appear or act in “spiky” or “thorny” ways and accidentally hurt others. Of course, we talked about how true friends stick by one another’s sides through all the seasons of life, and how seasons (and feelings) come and go- those of drought and those of bloom.
Along with our DIY posting/color match activity, we discussed what might make our own or others’ petals fall out, and what might be considered helping one’s petals to grow back. We also used our Flower Breathing Board to practice strategies we can use during our own times of struggle. This book is a MUST HAVE for classrooms and families!! Absolutely universal for all age groups in its message of the beauty and power of friendship through thick and thin.
Apple-Themed Mindful Play
In this setup, we are focusing on appreciating the glory and the gifts of nature with some apple-themed mindful play! First, I cannot say enough great things about our book for today, “Good Morning, World, I Love You So” by Olivia Herrick!! What a perfect pairing for our apple mosaic deep breathing board and our sensory play mat! A poetic love letter to the joyful and beautiful gifts of the Earth, this board book helps us remember the calming effects of nature. We traced the lines on our breathing board as we practiced our deep breathing, and used play dough to fill in the mosaic spaces, as well as to create and pick apples on our imaginative play mat. We also talked about how sometimes walking barefoot in the grass or dirt, looking up at the sky, or eating a crunchy food, like an apple, can help us when we are struggling!
Like our printables? Check them out as part of my Play To Learn Preschool: September is For Apples Pack, or get the Fall Bundle for September, October, & November for hands-on play resources all season long!
Sunflower Soup
We had some sunflowers that were on their way out, so I combined them with our Flower Breathing Board for some sunflower soup mindfulness play! Practicing deep breathing when a child is calm and focused is a great way to help them develop healthy coping skills for difficult and emotionally charged situations! Water play is also often a super calming form of play (I know my kids both will happily play with water for extended periods of time!), so the two just paired perfectly!
Breathe & Affirm
This mindful play setup is kinetic sand, our positive daily affirmation cards, and rainbow pasta. We followed the pasta spiral as we worked on deep breathing and repeating our affirmations. Each time, we change the shape of the pasta trail and repeat this exercise! I also started posting these affirmation cards around our house (works in the classroom as well) in visible areas so that we can say them more often! When you focus on using affirmations regularly, you will see such a difference in your preschooler’s self-talk and emotional regulation abilities!
Big, Big, Feelings
Every day, my heart is heavy with the weight of the news of so many preventable tragedies in our world. To say I have big feelings is an understatement. Our children also have big feelings, and they look to us to help them process, learn, and help them grow. I feel strongly that we must teach them to be kind and teach them to be mindful, but if we aren’t rooting our parenting work in what is necessary to dismantle white supremacy and liberate us all, we are going to see our children grow up, only to repeat many of the same harmful cycles we have endured and been harmed by. Healing, processing trauma, and making space for compassion and community care is liberatory work, and we should be proud to take part in this effort with our earliest learners.
The Very Hungry Worry Monsters
This book resonated so much for my older son when he entered a very worried and fear-based phase. When we saw this book and I told him the “worry monsters” eat all your worries, he got so excited and started naming all the things he has been worrying about recently, happy to have a new way to process those feelings. I used our little pompom ball monsters that we made during Halloween season, and paired them with our “magic” drawing board, which erases your drawing in just a single click. He drew his worries on the board, and then chose a monster to eat his worry, clicking the button to make it disappear as he did so. It was so therapeutic, I really might try it myself!
Water Painting
So much delight can be found in painting with nothing but water. Let it dry, and paint all over again! It is a calming sensory experience that is simple and effective in helping children regulate their bodies and emotions during times of stress.
High Engagement Fine Motor
Process Art
Emotional Processing
Creativity
Pre-Writing Skills
Social Emotional Learning Leaves
We went on a nature walk to collect leaves and pine cones, worked together to glue down the eyes, and then turned the discussion toward emotions and facial expressions once we were ready to add mouths to each monster! Once they were finished, I gave space for independent play as he brought these adorable little creatures to life! A perfect social emotional learning activity for Autumn or any other time leaves and natural materials are readily available!
Mindfulness for Little Ones
This book, by Heidi France, EdD is a fantastic resource for teachers, counselors, and parents alike! Packed with tons of ideas and step-by-step directions for mindfulness activities that foster empathy, self-awareness, and joy for young children, this book is perfect for at home or in the classroom! Whether your little ones like movement, need assistance with calming down, or need some extra emotional support as they grow and develop (who doesn’t?!), this fantastic book can help any caregiver create space for intentional and loving practices that will enhance the lives of adults and children alike!
Goodnight Yoga
Sometimes it can be hard for us to get outside and moving as much as our kids need. I pulled this beautiful book, Goodnight Yoga, by Miriam Gates, off our shelf just as the colder weather set in and we were spending fewer hours outdoors. The gorgeous illustrations, by Sarah Jane Hinder, and simple poetic text guide children (and adults!) through calming yoga poses with a focus on body, mind, and heart. Whether adding it to a bedtime routine, using it as a mindfulness exercise, or letting it guide kids during a brain break, this a must-have for your home or classroom!
Looking for ready-made resources and activities to help young children with social emotional learning? I would love for you to check out some of these best-selling social emotional learning resources from Love and Excellence!
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