Your child will make facial expressions representing a character's emotions in a chapter book, take a selfie, label it, and talk about how the character was feeling.
Learning Area(s): Reading and Writing; Social and Emotional
MATERIALS
- smart phone, tablet, or camera-enabled laptop
- chapter book at an appropriate reading or listening level for your child
LET'S PLAY
Help your child choose a chapter book that is either at a level they can read with minimal assistance or one that is at their interest level that you can read with or to them.
Choose a place in each chapter to ask your child how they think one of the main characters is feeling. Often the text won’t say exactly how a character is feeling. You can help your child figure it out by using what the character says and does as clues. Drawing inferences like this, and making connections between the story and your child’s experiences, are two ways you can help your child understand what they read.
“Sometimes when we read a book and learn about a character, we can think of how we would feel in the same situation. We can also look for clues like what the character did or said that can help us figure out what the character is feeling.” Ask your child questions and discuss how the character is feeling. (Hint: Reread parts of the text to find out how the author describes the character or their behavior.)
You might like to ask:
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- “How do you know that is how they are feeling?”
- “What clues helped you figure that out?”
- “Can you think of a time when something like this happened to you?”
- “How did it make you feel? Why?”
If you have a smartphone, tablet, or camera-enabled computer, invite your child to look into the device so that they can see their face. Encourage them to make a facial expression that shows how the character is feeling at a specific part of the chapter they have just read and take a selfie. Look at the picture with your child and discuss the feeling or emotion they think the character is experiencing. Save the series of selfies in a digital document, print them, or have your child draw how the character might look using their photos on the device as a guide. Ask your child to label each selfie or drawing with the name of the emotion, the event in the story, and the page number.
Repeat this process over the course of a few days or a week for each chapter. If the book has longer chapters, you might have your child take more than one selfie. When you and your child have finished the book, put all the images of the feelings/chapters in order to create either a digital document or a paper booklet. Review each feeling the character had by reading the label below each photo and discuss why the character in the story felt that way. You can continue to use the chapter book to check yourselves and to remember things that happened,
TIPS
- Chapter book series you might like to explore with your first grade child:
- Penny and Her… by Kevin Henkes
- Croc and Ally by Derek Anderson
- Snail and Worm by Tina Kugler
- Fly Guy by Tedd Arnold
- Fox by Edward Marshall
- Katie Fry: Private Eye by Katherine Cox
- Fergus and Zeke by Kate Messner
- George and Martha by James Marshall
- More advanced chapter book series you might like to explore with your first or second grade child:
- Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa by Erica Silverman
- Yasmin by Saadia Faruqi
- Boris by Andrew Joyner
- Sofia Martinez by Jacqueline Jules
- Ling and Ting by Grace Lin
- Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park
- Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- You might also ask your child’s teacher to send home an appropriate book or series.
- If your child repeats only basic emotions (sad, mad, happy), try introducing some complex emotion words: jealous, playful, lonely, disgusted, curious, annoyed, confused, amused. You can show your child photos online of what these emotions look like.