Most importantly, especially in the initial years of childhood, emotional development is a determinant factor in global development. The domain includes learning emotional intelligence, self-regulation, empathy, and social knowledge in toddlers and infants. Throughout the infant and toddler periods, children know how to express feelings, understand other people's feelings, and create connections. Their social learning and cognition alongside general well-being are decided by the emotional foundation (Berk & Meyers, 2023).

Teaching Competencies and Skills

Early childhood teachers play a vital role in fostering emotional development. Essential competencies include:

  1. Understanding Child Development: Teacher’s ought to be thoroughly familiar with infants' and toddlers' emotional development milestones and personal traits.
  2. Building Relationships: Developing Relationships: In order to foster a safe emotional environment for kids, strong, trustworthy relationships are necessary.
  3. Observation and Assessment: The capacity to watch and identify emotional signs and actions in order to customize support for every child's requirement (Arthur, Beecher, Death, Dockett, & Farmer, 2020).
  4. Communicative Skills: Let children express themselves and give them chances to explain how they feel using words (Arthur et al., 2020).
  5. Collaboration with Families: Working with families to better understand the emotional contexts of children and to strengthen nurturing behaviors at home (Gordon & Browne, 2023).

Authentic Curriculum Provision and Learning Opportunities

Teachers can integrate emotional development across various curriculum areas. Here are examples of authentic provisions:

  • Mathematics and Numeracy: Incorporate emotional subjects into math games, like counting smiles or frowns, to have a relaxed conversation about emotions (Potter, 2024).
  • Humanities and Social Sciences: Provide storytime activities that focus on a range of feelings and social interactions in a manner that enables children to identify with and label their own feelings (Perry, Dockett, & Harley, 2012).
  • Integrated Curriculum (STEM/STEAM): Use discussions about caring for living things and easy scientific investigations (such as watching plants grow) to build empathy and identification with the natural world (Bodrova & Leong, 2015).

Original Learning Opportunities

  1. For Infants (0-12 months)

Activity: Emotion Sensory Board

  • Objective: To increase emotional awareness by means of sensory investigation.
  • Materials: include mirrors, large pictures of expressive faces, and safe textures like bumpy surfaces and soft textiles.
  • Implementation: As caregivers describe emotions (excited, sad, surprised), infants are free to touch and investigate the sensory board. In order to promote interaction and the recognition and comprehension of emotions, caregivers create faces that match the images (Bodrova & Leong, 2015).

For Toddlers (12-24 months)

Activity: Feelings Puppet Play

  • Objective: Encourage emotional expression.
  • Materials: Basic hand puppets with various faces that have expressions on them.
  • Implementation: Educators illustrate different scenarios that evoke emotions using the puppets (e.g., a puppet loses a toy). They ask children to describe what has happened to them and to explain how the puppet is feeling. Emotional expression and language skills are encouraged by this activity (Berk, 2013).

For Young Toddlers (2-3 years)

Activity: Emotions Art

  • Objective: To use art to create an actual manifestation of emotions.
  • Materials: Paper, crayons, and stamps with emoticon themes (such as smiley faces and hearts).
  • Implementation: Children are provided with stamps and colours to create a piece of art that describes their mood for the day. Through talks about their paintings, teachers allow children to articulate their feelings and identify others. This is incorporating emotional intelligence, creativity, and communication (Gordon & Browne, 2023). 

Children’s Literature and Movement Resources

Children’s Picture Books:

  • When I am Feeling Happy
  • I feel Sad

Songs

  • I am Brave I am Strong
  • Feelings

Rhymes

  • The wheels on the bus go
  • If you are happy and you know it

Movement Game

  • Yoga