Emotional Literacy
Emotional literacy is a really important topic that all children should be learning as soon as they understand language.
As you may know by now, children have big emotions over the littlest of things! Especially young toddlers whose brains are underdeveloped. Their anger can turn into an instant tantrum at the blink of an eye.
I personally will describe and label the emotions as I see it, e.g. “You are frowning, you look worried.” “You are crying, it seems that you may be feeling sad.” This won’t stop them from feeling the way they do, but it does give them the language to describe to you in the future what they are feeling, and you can also pre-empt their big emotions before they occur. ABC Kids have a nice and simple series called Moodies that illustrate the common emotions in a simple and child-friendly manner. The movie Inside Out remains one of our family favourite movie about emotions.
To help my children understand emotions and to teach them emotional literacy, I created these Chinese English bilingual flashcards as part of our thematic lesson into emotions.
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Key Chinese vocabulary your child will learn with these bilingual emotion flashcards
12 of the most common emotions are included in this set of bilingual flashcards:
- Happy
- Sad
- Confused
- Surprised
- Scared
- Angry
- Curious
- Excited
- Shy
- Worried
- Tired
- Calm
I selected real pictures of children depicting the emotions as I find real pictures better at creating deeper meaning and connection when learning such an abstract concept.
And as the pictures are of children, I find that my children can understand it better when we talk about these emotions in themselves.
How we used the bilingual emotion flashcards
During my lesson, I did the usual matching activities with this Montessori flashcards.
A really fun one we did was Charades! We would take turns to pick a card and then act out the emotion for the others to guess. Some are easy, others not so, and all were hilarious to watch!!
A nice group discussion was around how we all feel these emotions, and that it was perfectly fine to feel them. What we have to be mindful of (this includes both children and adult, that’s you daddy and mummy!) is what we do with them. Childhood 101 has a 5 easy steps to managing emotions poster which could be a nice visual reminder for everyone at home. You could also create a poster together that reflects your family’s needs and strategies.
Where to download Bilingual Emotion Flashcards
You can instantly download and print at home these beautifully designed Montessori 3 parts flashcards for learning Chinese and English on the Mandarin Homeschool Teacherpayteachers store.
These bilingual emotion flashcards are available in 3 Chinese/English versions:
If you are homeschooling in Mandarin Chinese and English, then do check out this easy to prep Montessori bilingual flashcards bundle, covering 14 common themes at 20% off!
Such a great resource! Thank you for explaining how you used the cards, because I’m usually totally uninterested in flashcards. This use of them seems much more useful and fun than just plain memorization.
Thanks Breanna! I’m glad you found the tips helpful! I think flashcards are seriously underrated as a teaching tool. Sometimes we just need to be a bit more creative. 😁