The Colour Monster

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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. Introduce the story, ‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas or listen to it being read here. There are some questions in the clip after the story which might help to scaffold a discussion around the story. 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. Put your little one’s memory skills to the test with this sweet monster card match-up! Shuffle the cards so that the pairs of emotions are separated. Allow learners to study the card placement before you flip them upside down and then challenge them to find the matching pairs. 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?

Share photos of the resources in your classroom with others via social media and link to tpet.co.uk 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. The book also emphasizes being able to feel and honor whatever feeling comes up and tell us that it is OK to feel all of these feelings, it is okay to listen to our bodies, and it is okay to cry! So powerful, especially for young people who often get flooded and want to repress feelings. Let’s explore colour some more through messy play! The children might like to experiment with paint or water and food dye by mixing colours to see what new colours they can make. What colours can they create and what feelings do they link with their new colours?Here’s hoping this activity brings you and your clients some superpowers to help untangle those messy, chaotic, and confusing feelings! As an extension activity, the discussion could also focus on what things help when they are feeling sad, afraid or angry.

The next sheet is all about taking time to separate out and honor each feeling. With the My Feeling Jar worksheet you can clearly identify each feeling experienced and how much of each feeling. You can go deeper with young people and identify triggers, how they felt it in their bodies, warning signs of these feelings, and choices that might be helpful vs unhelpful to honor what is going on for them over the week.

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The little girl puts the Colour Monster’s feelings into separate jars. Use the template below to draw things that make you happy/ angry/sad etc.

Recap on the story of ‘The Colour Monster’. Parents may want to read the story again with the children or invite the children to tell them the story, using their own home-made monsters from last week’s resources. 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! Think of other emotions and choose colours that might represent them (e.g. frustration, disgust, envy). Introduce the colors and feelingsin the story. Talk about different feelings you may have in different situation. For example, ask "Have you ever felt sad? Tell me about it". Then introduce this story about a monster whose feelings are all mixed-up! "He doesn't know how he feels. Let's find out more about Color Monster's 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.) This book is a wonderful story about a “Color Monster” who is full of mixed up colors and emotions. A little girl takes the monster by the hand and gently helps the Color Monster untangle and separate out all of these feelings and put them into jars.

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! The Color Monster by Anna Llenas teaches abour big emotions in a simple way for young children. In the story, an adorable monster has mixed-up feelings and the author helps to sort them out. Happiness is like the sun, anger is a burning fire, and calm is like the leaves swaying in the wind. Young children may not be able to tell you exactly what they are feeling, but they can use the concepts in this book to help express themselves. 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. It’s important to remind young learners that, at times, we may feel more than 1 emotion, or may not even be able to verbalize how we’re feeling at all! This hands-on activity enforces this notion visually by having learners attach colorful felt squares to a Color Monster cut-out. Invite the children to discuss their feelings. Sometimes we can feel a bit mixed up like the Colour Monster. It might help to have a friend, older brother or sister or a trusted adult help the child to sort out their feelings at those times, just like the Colour Monster and the little girl. Talk about the things which make the children feel happy, sad, angry, fearful and calm and loved.

SOLO Account Usage: Solo accounts are for use by one teacher/user in a single class setting only. If you are looking to use our resources or any of our schemes such as WellbeingWednesday, Buddy Bots or THINK Maths in a whole school or multiple class setting then a 'Whole School' membership will be required. This is regardless of how many teachers or users are actually 'delivering' the content. Any content intended for use in a whole school or multiple class setting must be supported by a whole school membership. For an even better way to find KS2 resources, discover tailored suggestions, and much more - visit the KS2 resource HUB! GO TO KS2 HUB Add googley eyes to any art projectsto make fun monsters. Here is an example of a great googley eye monster: Coffee filter monsters 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.