Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage our own emotions and learn to interpret and recognize the emotions of others. Bearing in mind that we are emotional beings it is something very important. Emotions are inevitable and uncontrollable, but what we can do is learn to manage them in a healthy way. Something as important as our happiness and success in life will depend on it. Let's see some activities to develop emotional intelligence in children.
How does working on emotional intelligence benefit the child?
Thanks to emotional intelligence, you are giving your child tools for his present and his future. Tools that will determine your social competence, your emotional well-being, your way of coping with life's bumps, and your overall health.
Fortunately, more and more importance is being given to emotional intelligence. Emotions have always been in the background in schools, where they focus on our rational part. Instead emotions are present throughout our lives, influences our relationships, jobs, families, friends and partner. Something fundamental that we teach children from an early age so that they are more successful in all facets of their lives. Let's see some activities to develop emotional intelligence in childrenyears so that you can work on this skill with your child.
Activities to develop emotional intelligence in children
Names and qualities. The child is given a sheet of paper and a pencil and asked to write his name and surname (if it is too long, choose only one of the two). With each letter that makes up your name, you must add a positive quality that defines you.to. They can also do this activity with the name of someone else important to them.
One face, one emotion. It is very easy, through drawings, letters or magazine clippings you will be shown faces that show different types of emotions. First ask him if he can distinguish what emotion are you seeing and explain why. Then ask how the character in the picture must be feeling. You can put examples from your day to day. It can also be done in reverse, say an emotion to the child and draw a character with that emotion. With the different images you can create your own emotional dictionary. This activity allows you improve your empathy by learning to recognize the emotions and feelings of others.
Jars of emotions. With recycled jars you can do this simple activity. You can put several jars, you can put for example one for joys and another for worries. You can increase the jars according to the age of the child. The child every day You must write down and explain in some small papers how they feel that day and put it in the corresponding jar. This activity will improve the identification of emotions, as well as the way to communicate and express them.
Stories. Through stories, children can work on their emotional intelligence almost without realizing it. Seeing how the characters feel in different situations allows them to see the different emotions that exist and identify them in themselves. Improve empathy, self-knowledge, improve emotional vocabulary, understand past situations and introspection. Do not miss the «20 best stories for children from 0 to 3 years old» y "The 20 best stories for 3-6 year olds".
Guignol. A theater or puppet is a perfect way to interpret situations invented by children where different emotions can be seen. The child chooses the personal, situation and emotions and have to create a story. For this activity the dice are very good (in this case there would be 3: one for the character, another for the place and another for the emotion) and with these three pieces of information imagine their history. They will have a great time, it will stimulate their creativity and improve their emotional intelligence.
Emotions in front of the mirror. We can do it in front of a mirror and ask him to interpret different emotions. This will help you interpret the emotions in others.
Because remember ... the tools that we will give our children for life will be the best gifts we can give them.