We are on Week 2 of Fruits of the Spirit curriculum with our 2.5 yr old toddler and looking back it was such a fun week with lots of learning for J. We hadn’t talked about emotions with him till now, so we spent the week doing some activities on emotions and reaching a lot of books on them, while explaining how he can be Joyful always because God loves him just as he is. This page contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase after clicking a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Some of our favorites from the week are:
- Roaring Mad Riley : A Dinosaur learning to redirect his anger while finding peace and joy. What’s not to love!
- The Color Monster : This might be the favorite of all the books J has read till now. It is about a little girl helping the color monster identify and separate his emotions.
- A little spot takes action : This was a box set of books which J loves. It might be targeted to a little bit older audience, but he loves asking ” What is spot doing?” which leads me to explain it in ticket terms, and I loved how I could connect with him.
- Scribble stones : A cute sorry about how a small some makes it a mission to bring JOY into the world.
THEME ACTIVITY
We repeated this one activity every day. The main focus was for J to identify different emotions that he sees and experiences himself everyday. I printed and laminated a bunch of images I downloaded off Google. A few examples would be a toddler throwing a tantrum, an ice cream truck, a kid dancing with her parents, a child crying after he is being bullied, etc.
During the activity, I explain to him what the picture represents and ask him to place it on the lane that represents the emotion. I loved doing this activity with him everyday as I look to create more opportunities to get down to his level, enter his world and hear what he had to say. And I can set this activity anywhere, while cooking or just before bedtime.
MATCH THE EMOTIONS – DOT STICKER ACTIVITY
I drew a few emotions on the dot stickers and J got to match them using a pen. We covered happiness (Joy), sadness (crying), surprise and anger. As J is currently working on pen control and flooring lines, this was a great activity for him. We talked about the different emotions as he worked on matching them. I also had a few extra stickers so J can pay around with them, match them as I talked about them more.
FEED THE HAPPY FACE THE MATCHING ALPHABET
We did this activity to review our alphabets while learning a song. I used a cereal box for this activity and taped the string of alphabets at the bottom so it wraps around the box. I moved the ribbon at the bottom and asked J to drop the matching alphabet into the happy face. As he did the activity, we sang the song “The Joy of the Lord is my strength “. I’ve loved this song, each and every verse of it! I prayed J grows up knowing the love of God and the Joy He brings into his life when he accepts Jesus as His Savior!
EMOTIONS SENSORY BOTTLES
Oh this was such a fun one – for me to make and for J to play and learn with. Sensory bottles can be an attractive way for toddlers or even babies to explore and learn. I go over in detail how I made these bottles in this post. J spent almost a whole morning playing with the bottles, and he learned to make faces to represent each expression in the bottle. And he still plays with them almost a month later. Such a great teaching hack for toddlers!
EMOTIONS PLAYMATS
This activity was such a fun way for J to explore and learn more about his emotions. J is currently into Play dough – mixing then, rolling them for imaginative play. So I made and printed out some emotions and had them laminated for J to trace them with Play dough. You can find the printout here.
EMOTIONS MEMORY GAME
I printed and laminated some emotions we learned over the last few days(you can find them here). This was the first time J played a memory game, but he caught on pretty quick. As he played, we enacted what each emotion might look like.
Memory game is a great way to work on the toddler’s attention, concentration and focus. If your ticket is not ready for this or gets frustrated in the middle of the game, it’s perfectly fine to stop and try again later.
EMOTIONAL EGGS DROP ACTIVITY
Sensory bins are a great way to not only keep your toddler busy, but I’ve witnessed my toddler learning things better with Sensory bins. I try to include at least one bin per week, as J loves loves loves them.
This was a great activity for him to match the emotions and examine his own emotions at he drops them in the tunnels. I go over the setup of this activity in this post.
COLOR MONSTER COMPANION CRAFT
Color Monster was the hit of the week for J. It is such a relatable book for a toddler and if had colors and monsters, what’s not to love! I came up with this idea for a companion craft so J can relate to the emotions better. He loved doing the craft and also using them after.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times we’ve read this book with the companion craft we did. I go over how we made the color monster in this post.
Though this was a week on the Fruits of the Spirit – Joy, I really wanted my toddler to understand his emotions better before we focus on being Joyful and spreading Joy to others. I want to spend more time in the near future talking about Joy of the Lord with my toddler in the near future. So stay tuned!
