Monster Feelings

In kindergarten this week we began discussing feelings.  I started by asking, "What are feelings?" and let the students practice raising their hands and waiting patiently to be called on (an important skill to reinforce from day one!).  Many feelings were named including lonely, sad, mad, happy, tired, nervous, etc.  Then I introduced our read aloud for the day, Glad Monster Sad Monster written by Ed Emberley and Anne Miranda.

Glad Monster Sad Monster is a book about feelings that uses funny monster masks the reader can try on, while giving examples of times when you might experience a certain feeling.  The kids loved seeing how my nose poked out the monster's nose on the mask!  For example, the yellow monster is glad when he gets to open presents and slurp ice cream.  While reading the story I paused to ask students if they would feel the same way the monsters do.  I also asked about what kinds of things they do that make them experience that same feeling. 

After the story I showed them a poster highlighting the different monster feelings we saw in the story.  I asked them to tell me how we knew how each monster was feeling.  We discussed that looking at facial expressions can let us know how someone else might be feeling.  I explained that we have to use facial expressions as clues to help us figure out how others might be feeling.

Finally we made our own monster feeling masks!  Using paper plates, die cute construction paper and googley eyes, the students created a face to describe how they were feeling at that moment.  Here are some of their creations: