Books to Work on Emotions

Over the last couple days, I have shared a lot about my drama activities.  The main focus of drama in my room during my first year was emotions.  We continue to focus on this now, but are also trying to focus on more complex emotions, manners, and social skills (such as personal space, staying on topic, etc.).  Back when I was just starting out teaching my students about emotions, we spent a lot of time practicing/acting out a variety of emotions during drama.  Once my students were able to act out a variety of emotions, I wanted them to work on labeling them in the classroom as well so they could get daily practice.  I also wanted them to see their own faces and what they looked like when expressing different emotions.  I had each student make a book of their emotions.  We used them as a work task where the kids had to label their own emotions.  This was the cover.  Each kid got to label and draw themselves expressing an emotion of their choice.

 On each page, the text on the bottom says, "(Kid's name) feels ______."  The kids had to take the correct emotion and velcro it onto the page.

Once my kids got better at labeling their emotions as well as others, I knew we were ready to start discussing "why" people feel each emotion.  I made a book for our class where I had picture of my students in a variety of scenarios.  

On each page, I had choices as to how that person could be feeling.  The kids had to velcro the star on the correct emotion.  In the example below, I used pictures of me with a "scared" face.  The choices at the bottom of the page are "frustrated" and "scared."  The kids are supposed to take the star and velcro it on the "scared" face.

Here are some more examples of pages in the book.  My kids loved reading this book in small groups.  Now, they are able to read it independently during quiet reading.  I love it because it is interactive and you can go back and check on whether or not your students labeled the correct emotion on each page!