Whenever I am teaching emotions, I always find that my students needs many visual examples because feelings don't look the same for everyone. One of my favorite books to use with anger is When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang.
This book tells the story of a little girl, Sophie, who gets mad at her sister for taking a toy. It explores how anger makes you feel and follows Sophie from the initial event, through her tantrum, and how she comforts herself. This book has GREAT illustrations.
Throughout the book, Sophie has a color outline. When she gets angry, it is gets really red and as she calms down, it changes to to yellow. My students are always mesmerized by this story and it gives a great starting point to many discussions about feelings and how to deal with them.
Activities you can do with this book:
- Talk about what makes you angry and how you deal with it, both physically and emotionally
- Discuss what helps you calm down, explore & practice different calming techniques
- Have students draw pictures of themselves in a happy place
- Brainstorm other emotions and have each student draw a different face for each emotion
- Play charades and act out all the emotions you brainstorm together
I will caution you that Sophie runs away from her home alone to calm down. I always discuss with my students that running away alone is not a good choice. Then we talk about what she could do differently. I still think it is a great discussion and good point to talk about why that isn't safe.
Do you ever use this book in therapy? What other books are good for talking about emotions?
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I have never heard of this book! Actually, I haven’t used many books in therapy that talk about emotions. Maybe I haven’t had enough kiddos on caseload to really look into yet? I don’t know. While on my internship, I used a book, for a student who stuttered, that talked about feelings and emotions of the people who are in conversation with those who stutter. It was an interesting book, but at this point…I can’t remember the name of it?!
If you don’t follow Jessica Chase at Consonantly Speaking on Pinterest, you should! You will find all of her stuff under Consonantly Speaking, but here is a link to the book pins she has http://pinterest.com/speechpins/speech-books/! She is fabulous with providing resources!
Courtney
littlespeechcorner.blogspot.com
I have a lot of little guys on the higher end of the autism spectrum and I have found books to be really useful with them to reinforce a skill we have been working on. It gives them the opportunity to identify emotions in others and discuss behavior choices. I really like it. I think I could honestly find a book to work on any speech or language skill! Not sure of the stuttering book…I don’t have a lot of kids who stutter, but maybe it was one put out by the Stuttering Foundation? I know they have lots of stuff like that.
I do! She is awesome 🙂