Teaching an emotional vocabulary is the first step to helping children learn to manage their emotions. The Emotional ABC’s program has recently made their accounts to FREE to teachers and counselors. The online program provides a format for counselors to allow their students to access online lessons from home.
Through the Emotional ABC’s program, students learn how to use verbal, facial, and body clues to match the feelings of other children with the word associated with that feeling. The audio prompting guides early readers and adds the element of gaming to learning SEL content.
The program normalizes feelings and encourages students to recognize bodily sensations surrounding big feelings. Students are taught breathing techniques along, with other strategies to begin managing their big emotions. In an ideal setting, a teacher or counselor would guide the lessons on the big screen while allowing students to engage individually with the content, but if that isn’t an option, it is possible to allow students to self-pace the curriculum.
Overall, the activities and content are organized well and support the goal of teaching social and emotional wellness. My only complaint is that sometimes the activities don’t seem to align with the goal of the curriculum (why the matching game or puzzles?). However, for a free program, it’s a pretty fabulous resource.
THE SCHOOL COUNSELING TRIBE 