12 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN - ECONOMÍA - 2024

The emotional intelligence activities for children that I will mention will help you train this much-needed skill in life, whether you are a teacher or a parent. The development of minors should not be relegated to school exclusively, but also applied at home. For this purpose, it is important that parents are sensitized to the importance of working on emotional strengths.

As in school, or any other area, this work should not be done in a timely manner, but we have to keep it in mind in our day to day. Parents should be a reference to help develop the emotional skills of their children.

On many occasions, the needs most related to school and the child's performance in it are attended to at home. This task is important, but let's not forget emotional management.

As each generation of children seems to get smarter, their emotional and social capacities seem to be dwindling. Hence the importance of working on Emotional Intelligence at home.

Different studies show that children with Emotional Intelligence abilities are happier, more confident, less aggressive, and also have greater success in school.

Activities to promote emotional intelligence

Properly managing emotions during childhood has multiple benefits. And not only for the child, but also for her family and her closest context, such as school.

Now, I will go on to detail a series of tools that we can use in our day to day to improve emotional management.

Inside out (2015)

This Disney Pixar film is a very good tool for working with children, since, being an animated film, it will be more enjoyable for them to watch.

In it, 5 of the basic emotions appear (joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear), in the absence of the surprise that, being such a brief emotion, the scriptwriters did not know how to fit in the film.

With it, they will know their emotions and learn to understand that feeling negative emotions is not bad.

The shower

It is an activity to develop with a group of children. It involves massaging each other as if they were receiving a shower. Thus, they will learn that touch and caresses are a good way of expressing affection towards others.

The box of affections

It is another way of showing our affection towards our colleagues. It can be done at home, with the family or at school with other classmates. In the box, which they themselves choose, they will deposit different forms of affection and affection towards their loved ones.

Draw faces that express different emotions

This resource is used with children who are in the preschool stage and, also, those who suffer from an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). After the faces have been drawn, they can be hung in a conspicuous place in the classroom or home. In this way, children will be able to indicate what emotion they feel at that moment.

Imitate different emotions

In addition to representing them on paper, a good resource is, before a mirror, imitate different emotions and reflect on how our facial expression changes. In this way, they will learn to recognize them in their own face and in that of others.

The emotional diary

It is recommended for those who are in the pre-adolescence stage. They are encouraged to write down in the journal how they feel when they experience a positive or negative situation. To this reflection, they can add why they think they feel this way and if they consider it necessary to change the emotion, as well as what they can do to change it.

Faced with an event of great emotional charge and that is relevant to them, through theatricalization, they can be helped to connect with the emotion they are feeling at that moment and they can name it, in addition to detecting why they are feeling it.

Music

This exercise can be used at any educational stage. Listening to music has positive effects on our well-being. You have to choose the one that generates tranquility, calm and inner peace so that they can regulate their stress and anxiety. Also, you can choose musical pieces that generate emotions such as joy.

In this way, we not only work on emotional management, but also the capacity for active listening is promoted if at the end of the song, you reflect on how you have connected with your emotions.

In addition, we can accompany this activity, singing and dancing. In this way, well-being is generalized in children.

The goose of emotions

Based on the traditional game of the goose. It consists of representing different emotions, as you go through the boxes. The rest of the classmates will be able to accompany the one who is representing the corresponding emotion, characterizing it.

In this way, children will realize that there are different ways to represent an emotion and learn to detect it in the faces of others.

The emotion cards

With this deck of cards, they will work on emotions and feelings to learn to label them. These cards have a picture that represents the emotional expression and, underneath, a brief description. The cards are turned face down and, rolling a dice, you will have a certain function.

These functions will be chosen by the facilitator of the activity, who will have to take into account the level of the children. For example: when did you last experience this emotion? How do you feel when you experience it?

The recipe for emotions

An activity that admits different variants is the recipe for emotions. It is about making a recipe, as if it were cooking, but with different emotions.

To do this, we can either design a recipe where the ingredients are the different emotions, or choose a single emotion and ask the children to design a recipe where the final result is the emotion we want to work on.

The jar of positive news

A fun activity that can be done by all ages is the Good News Jar. It is an activity that helps us to work joy with children.

To do this, every time any joyous event occurs in the children (anything that for them is cause for joy and that they want to share), it will be written on a piece of paper and put in a jar that we will have in class for that purpose..

A good time to collect the different positive news can be the assembly, once a week. In this way, once the agreed time has passed (it may be at the end of the term), we will sit down together and take out the jar of news.

We will read and remember those situations that made us happy once and with all of them, we will make a mural that we will share with the families.

Situations

• Objective:

1. Check how the group would act in certain situations.
2. Promote feelings of empathy.

• Time needed: 45 minutes, approximately.
• Group size: medium, about 20 people. If it is less, it will take less time.
• Place: room or large classroom in which each person has space to work individually.
• Materials needed: cards with pictures or news (depending on the age and level of the group).
• Steps to follow:

1. The facilitator of the group will explain that they will present to the group a series of situations and that each one, individually, must think about each one of them. A list of questions can be attached, such as the following: what feelings do the people who appear, how do you think they feel, how would you feel in their place, what would you do if you were them, etc.
2. They are given time to answer it individually, and then a group discussion follows.

• Others: it is important to approach this activity carefully depending on the group it is aimed at. Also, you can choose the situations depending on the issue you want to address in a certain way.

In this case, reflection is proposed in the first place individually and then in a group. This condition can be altered and done first in subgroups and then the whole world debate, or it can be done directly in a broad debate.

Bibliography

1. Goleman, D. (2002). Emotional Intelligence. Editorial Kairos.
2. Goleman, D. (1999). The practice of emotional intelligence. Editorial Kairos.
3. GROP (2009). Activities for the development of emotional intelligence. Barcelona: Parramón.
4. Ibarrora, B. (2003). Stories to feel. Educate the emotions. Madrid: SM.
5. Inside Out. (2015). Disney Pixar.
6. Lozano-González, L., García-Cueto, E., Lozano-Fernández, LM, Pedrosa, I. and Llanos, A. (2011). Affective disorders at school. Guide to the School Program for Emotional Development (PEDE). Ministry of Education and Science.
7. Núñez Pereira, C. and Valcárcel, R. (2013). Emotional. Say what you feel. Madrid: Winged Words.