The emotional education of children is a very important part of their development, and that is why we must help them, both at home and in the classroom.
To do this, today we want to show you a simple resource called “ Piggy Bank of Emotions ”, which can be used in preschool and first years of primary school. The main idea is to know the feelings of the children throughout the week , both positive and negative, so that later we can apply different activities in class to try to improve them.
The idea of the piggy bank is that children know that there they can express everything they are feeling at every moment of the day, without limit and with total confidence and security, writing it on a simple sheet of paper or drawing faces.
The piggy bank can be easily made with cardboard, although we can buy a prefabricated ceramic one in any store or bazaar with the shape we want, like a pig, for example.
How to work with the piggy bank in class
Once we have our piggy bank, the next step is to explain to the students that this very special piggy bank will be used to keep pieces of paper in it where they can express how they have felt during the day with words or drawings. We can teach them small examples with different emotion cards (happy, sad, nervous, etc.). Also, it can be useful if you want to do some special activity or have a suggestion for the classroom, anything, there are no limits to your imagination.
At the end of the day we will be able to take the papers that they have put and we will see, in this way, all the comments of the children. If you observe negative feelings, you can ask what they would do to solve them. The next day a small group assembly can be held to talk about the day before.
Finally we can make individual piggy banks at home or a single collective piggy bank, depending on whether we want to work in a more personalized way with each student.
