Craft Lesson 4: My Many Colored Days

Discussion:
I think this book would be a perfect opportunity to work with younger children on emotions and appropriate ways to express them. I feel younger children struggle with expressing their emotions appropriately, so I think this would be an important topic to discuss especially with younger children.

How To Teach It:
Dr. Seuss compares emotions in this book to animals. I think it would be a good twist to compare emotions to anything the children come up with. Maybe when they feel anger, they compare themselves to a barking dog showing its' sharp teeth. This will get children to use their imagination. Also, we can all bring up a discussion about how we can express these emotions in order to not hurt others. For example, as a teacher I could ask my students, "How do you handle things when you get angry; do you use your words or your body to express this emotion?". Then, we could discuss expectations I have as a teacher for my students to express their emotions in an appropriate manner. Since this is with younger children I do not know how far you could extend this activity, but it really just depends on your students. However, I really feel you could make the discussion more complex and introduce it in a K-2 classroom.