Buddies Dolls Activity

I was fortunate enough to present one of my activities to my Infant and Toddler class before implementing the activity within my field placement. Considering the feedback from the students and professor, I choose to use the Feelings Buddies dolls instead of my initial plan to use the characters from the Disney movie Inside Out. I was concerned with the children’s ability to relate or notice the emotional facial cues highlighted in the stuffed dolls from Inside Out. The Feelings Buddies dolls are very plain looking with very little distractibility allowing for the facial features to stand out. The instructor asked to review my activity before I planned to present it to the class. She thought the activity would tie in nicely to the curriculum usually covered at Social Sparks and chose a book for circle time that she felt paired nicely with my activity. After the teacher read The Feelings Book (Parr, 2005) to the small group of five children, she allowed me …show more content…
Children with developmental delays or disabilities may need to have these skills taught in a more direct manner with manipulations of the environment and through the use of visual supports. The Feeling Buddies and Faces activity along with the filefolder face activity helps young children gain a better understanding of their own emotions and helps them identity the facial features and nonverbal cues needed to read emotions in others. The activity offers flexibility and can be modified based on the age and need of the classroom and can, also, provide higher level thinking with additional discussion relating to coping and problem solving strategies. My activity helps children practice and gain the social and emotion skills required to be successful in the classroom and enhance their innate social abilities as “emotional