Toys That Promote Children’s Social-Emotional Wellbeing | 2024
Helping children develop into their best selves includes teaching them to acquire the skills they need to have healthy relationships and manage challenges. Play is a great way to facilitate organic opportunities to develop these skills and use specific vocabulary to express themselves.We have rounded up some of our favorite toys that help caregivers engage children’s social-emotional development.
Learning Resources Big Feelings Nesting Fruit Friends
Building vocabulary to identify emotions and feelings is an important first step for young children in building their social-emotional literacy and developing self-regulation. This colorful nesting toy helps little hands to do just that — to identify, e.g. — and what we at GGGT really like about the Big Feelings Nesting Fruits is that each fruit has two faces which display opposite emotions. Understanding polar opposite feelings for young children sets them up for success to later fill in the more nuanced continuum of human emotions that exist in between the poles.
Slumberkins Mads Not Bad Board Book
As adults we know that feelings of anger are real and can be unsettling, yet we often will use language to minimize and negate similar feelings in children. Perhaps it’s because a young child might express their anger with screaming, tantrums, and other responses that can trigger us and/or that are hard to take seriously. But if we can help children to understand, identify, and validate their feelings when they are mad, we not only build their emotional literacy and empower them to have greater agency over their feelings and actions, and in turn we might reduce the frequency and potency of outbursts and tantrums. This super snuggly jellyfish and accompanying book from Slumberkins helps teach conflict resolution skills with the use of a narrative story. It is a great tool for reminding children that a caregiver’s love is enduring and feeling mad is okay.
Eeboo Watch This Face Social Emotional Puzzle Pairs
This puzzle pairs game provides an opportunity for very intentional practice analyzing facial expressions that helps kids to draw conclusions about emotions. It’s an excellent way to facilitate conversations about situational awareness and develop the nuances of social emotional language. As children play, they will realize that there are often many outcomes based on a situation, and they are challenged with finding the best match possible.
Big Feelings Pineapple Deluxe Set from Learning Resources
A more “grown-up” toy with similar concepts to the Nesting Fruits, the Big Feelings Pineapple allows children to explore emotions and then build awareness between and articulate the connections between those facial expressions and emotions. At GGGT, one of our favorite ways to use this tool is during moments of reflection. When a child isn’t exactly sure what they are feeling, it provides an opportunity for self-reflection and processing. Children can use the mirror to see their own face and build the pineapple to recreate it. Later, the caregiver can use the pineapple as a tool to facilitate conversation around the child’s feelings.
Hand 2 Mind Mindful Maze
Feeling anxious and overwhelmed is not unique to grown-up life; children experience these feelings everyday too, and like any other skill in life, practicing what and how to deal with these emotions is a skill they will use forever. The Mindful Mazes from Hand2Mind are GGGT favorites for any age. They are simple, durable, portable, and universal, great for any of us, really. They engage the user's sense of touch and guide them through deep breathing with the use of tactile undulating groves, empty spaces, and dots. The Mindful Mazes require focus and concentration in order for a child to connect what he or she is feeling with their fingers and with each breath. This level of focus can in turn bring a sense of calm and relaxation to the child, helping them to overcome their stressful situation. As an added bonus, the pack comes with an informative guide on why and how to use the mazes and even includes a section on how to extend this practice.
Eeboo What’s Going on Here Conversation Cards
These cards are an excellent way to practice and roleplay social situations. They prompt the child to think “What’s going on here?” and use their social emotional detective skills to analyze the situation. The other side of the card has questioning prompts for the caregiver to further probe the child’s thinking and to help them look deeply into the facial expressions of the characters on the card. Then children build skills to not only identify the situation, but to draw inferences about it, which engages the brain in a more complex way.
A Little SPOT of Emotion Plush Spots and Books
This box set is nothing short of brilliant. The Spots (each one correlates a color to an emotion) come to life to perfectly capture the attention of children as young as four, helping to develop self-awareness and common language around the emotions. Each book explains, provides memorable examples of, and even gives strategies for dealing with each emotion. The depth of conversation that can be facilitated by these books is remarkable. In addition, the set includes a plush version of each emotion spot that can be used in myriad ways: they can be tools for children to role play situations, used to reenact the stories and practice using the social emotional vocabulary they learned from the books, or a GGGT favorite option, they can simply be placed in a basket in a safe place for children to go to when they are feeling a big emotion. With the basket close at hand, a kid can sort through the plush spots and perhaps find one that matches how they feel, and bringing validation to their emotions.
