The Color Monster: A Story about Emotions: 1

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Have your students identify basic emotions as they match assorted colors and emotions to the correct monster. Once they’ve matched everything correctly, they can spend time coloring in their worksheet and, in small groups, discussing when they feel certain emotions. In this story, yellow refers to happiness, red is for anger and blue is linked to sadness. Do you agree with those colour choices? Why? As a group, we discussed the interesting allocation of colour to the different emotions. Children who are particularly struggling could simply assign themselves a colour for their feeling. However, I wonder how useful this colour allocation is, as some children might have a favourite colour associated with a negative emotion.

Children easily gain a better understanding of how artists use color to express emotion during this lesson. Look again at the book, focusing on one emotion at a time. Have each child choose a square from the corresponding pile of colored emotions squares to paste into their jar. Make a list of words that the author links with each colour, e.g. yellow = bright and light, blue = gentle and alone. Can you think of synonyms for these words? Remember to read The Colour Monster Goes to School and try our related ideas too! Teaching Ideas and Resources: English Practice drawing faces that show different emotions. Can you draw a happy face? Can you draw an angry face? Use a mirror to see how your facial expression can change to show emotions.Think of other emotions and choose colours that might represent them (e.g. frustration, disgust, envy). The format of the book allows for a conversation with children about managing their feelings 'putting them into bottles' and discussing why they might be feeling a particular emotion.

Taking time to validate our learners makes them feel seen, heard, and cared for. Label an assortment of jars using a series of emotional faces. Over the course of a week, have your learners drop items, or their names, into the jar that they feel best represents their feeling that day. At the end of the week help them tally up the items and analyze their predominant emotion. Encouraging freedom of expression, especially at a young age, is very important. This activity encourages learners to use their imagination and tap into their own emotions. Guide learners on how to draw a funky monster by first giving a demonstration, and then handing out art supplies and letting them take the wheel as they create their own. Sometimes feelings get… all tangled up. This can be confusing and sometimes we need help untangling them and sorting them all out. Enter “ The Color Monster” by Anna Llenas! This book is AMAZING and as I talk about here and here bibliotherapy is such a wonderful practice that is so adaptable to provide as a therapeutic approach in all sorts of settings – office, in home, at school, and of course Tele-Play!Add googley eyes to any art projectsto make fun monsters. Here is an example of a great googley eye monster: Coffee filter monsters

This animated video is wonderful for introducing the ways in which we lose our cool. It helps little minds understand that it’s perfectly normal to do so from time to time, but also encourages them to think about how they might rein in those big feelings. Review story vocabulary. Here are some words in the story you may want to define: emotions, jumbled, separate, shines, twinkles, happiness, sadness, lonely, washes over, alone, burns, stamp out, unfair, disappear, fear, afraid, courage, shadows, calm, quiet, swaying, breathe, peace, different. (I would choose just a few.)The Color Monster is a children’s book by Anna Llenas about a confused and overwhelmed monster who learns to sort his emotions with the help of a little girl. The book is often used to teach children about managing their emotions and different ways to visualize how we feel. This fun activity has learners practicing their reading skills as they work to match the speech bubble to the correct monster. They will also employ fine motor skills as they use scissors to cut the monsters and speech bubbles out. By using cardboard, yarn, felt, a marker, and glue, little learners can design and craft their very own Color Monsters! They can use these creatures to put on an at-home, or in-class, puppet show and better yet; use the color monsters to help them verbalize different emotions. Another thing that is just fantastic about this book is the use of metaphor. It compares anger to a fire you might want to stomp out, sadness to a rainy day, and calm like leaves swaying in the wind. If you are doing any sort of metaphor work with kids this is a GREAT book to get the wheels turning!