Music, Art and Feelings

As you might know, children's emotions can be strong and passionate, especially in the first five years. Toddlers are in the process of learning how to control their emotional impulses, and preschoolers are developing more self-awareness. When we give children tools, like language, they can use them to practice self-control. They can practice taking action with words instead of hitting, or crying and screaming on the floor. Learning emotion-related language helps kids to associate words with behaviors and feelings, and  encourages self-awareness, and how to identify feelings and label them.

A drawing from our class.

One way to open the door to the language of feelings is with music. I like to give the kids some paper and crayons and play music (without lyrics) for them to color along to. I ask them open ended questions about how the music sounds. "Does this music sound happy or sad? Slow or fast? Mad or excited? What color goes with those feelings?" I let them color without talking as well, just giving them a chance to be self reflective and listen to the music while coloring. I use a variety of music during the same sitting so the children can hear the difference between the pieces of music.

A drawing from our class.

You can use this activity when kids are feeling calm or even when they are having strong feelings, as a way to redirect potentially inappropriate actions fueled by those strong feelings. Turning feelings into actions helps children to more easily deal with them. Here are few music suggestions:

Vivaldi's Four Seasons ("L'Estate/ III. Presto" is a good one)
Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt ("In the Hall of the Mountain King" is energetic)
Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals
Aaron Copland's Rodeo ("Saturday Night Waltz" is a gentle one)

You could even join the children in coloring along to music. It might be a good stress buster!

A drawing from our class.