Regulating emotions: activities for a healthy mind

Children are constantly learning and growing, and self-regulation plays a significant role in their development. It helps them manage their emotions in a healthy way, communicate effectively with others, and make appropriate choices and decisions.

Recognising children’s emotions is essential to understanding their behaviour. Early years children feel a range of emotions, but often cannot express, interpret or process them like us.

With poor emotional skills, it could be harder for children to learn:

• acceptance

• resilience

• confidence and control

• how to articulate experiences

• a sense of identity

• empathy

• a sense of self

There are several key components of self-regulation in early years, including emotional regulation, impulse control, and attention and listening control. 

Emotional regulation involves understanding and managing one's emotions, while impulse control refers to the ability to resist immediate temptations and impulses. Attentional control involves focusing on a task or activity for a certain period of time.

Parents, caregivers, and educators play a crucial role in supporting and promoting self-regulation in young children. By providing a nurturing and supportive environment, setting clear and consistent boundaries, and modelling positive behaviours, adults can help children develop their self-regulation skills.   Encouraging children to express their feelings, teaching them problem-solving strategies, and providing opportunities for practice and reinforcement are also important components of fostering self-regulation in early years. It is also important to provide words and explain their meaning to the emotions (naming those big emotions), and also model the way how you would handle these situations when they arise. Role-play with puppets can be a great way to support this. Self-regulation is developed through co-regulation, in which adults and children collaborate to reach a shared goal, including finding solutions for different emotional scenarios.

Activity ideas:

• mindfulness exercises: yoga, finger tracing, mindfulness colouring
• deep breathing techniques: bubble blowing breath, animal breathing
• sensory play: put together a self-regulatory toy box with different fidget and sensory toys such as sensory bean bags or sensory timers
• emotion toys: emotion puppets, emotion stones,emotion cards,puzzles and different games
• selection of books that are covering emotions: ‘How are you feeling today?’ ‘My little book of emotions’ ‘The colour monster’

These activity ideas can also be effective in helping children learn to regulate their emotions and behaviour. 

Overall, developing self-regulation in early years is essential for children's social, emotional, and cognitive development. By supporting and nurturing children's self-regulation skills, adults can help them build a strong foundation for future success and well-being.

Source:
Help for early years providers : Emotions (education.gov.uk) 
Articles - The Foundation Stage Forum (FSF) - Home of Early Years Foundation Stage (eyfs.info)
Self-regulation – Birth To 5 Matters