The Colour Monster

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Think of other emotions and choose colours that might represent them (e.g. frustration, disgust, envy). We are long time fans of The Color Monster book by Anna Llena– with it featuring on our 21 Best Books about Feelings and Emotions and 101 Social Skills Books for Kids booklists and one of our earliest Social Emotional Learning posts – 4 Ways to Boost Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence. Read The Color Monster book to students. Take another look through the book – noticing the color used to represent each emotion and how the illustrator use texture and imagery to represent each emotion? Inside: This free, printable The Color Monster Emotions Activity is a fabulous activity for developing emotional intelligence with children in the early grades. Llenas’s art is so expressive - childlike in its simplicity and sheer exuberance, with intensely scribbled crayon marks and wild brush strokes. It’s a joy to behold!

Experimenting with and mixing paint is such a fun and concrete way for the little thinkers to learn about primary and secondary colors. What you need: Color Recognition is an important concept to master in the younger learning years. Children at this age are still in the process of putting words to the different things they see around them. And everything they see has color! Everything they feel is still a bit difficult to express though, and these two activities will help them to realize that they are not the only ones that are a little confused. A certain monster needs their help!At the start of the story, the Colour Monster is feeling confused. When have you felt confused? What did you do in this situation? What can we do when we feel confused in the future? Explain to the children that the color monster is a bit confused. He has only 3 colors, which are red, blue and yellow, but he needs orange, purple and green to try and make sense of all those other feelings he feels. What should he do?

It’s not always easy to articulate our emotions, even at the best of times. COVID-19 has stirred them up good and proper (as they say here in Dorset). Introduce the story, ‘The Colour Monster’ by Anna Llenas or listen to it being read here. There are some questions in the clip after the story which might help to scaffold a discussion around the story.Invite the children to discuss their feelings. Sometimes we can feel a bit mixed up like the Colour Monster. It might help to have a friend, older brother or sister or a trusted adult help the child to sort out their feelings at those times, just like the Colour Monster and the little girl. Talk about the things which make the children feel happy, sad, angry, fearful and calm and loved. Remember to read The Colour Monster Goes to School and try our related ideas too! Teaching Ideas and Resources: English

The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas (Templar 2016) is described by Book Trust as ‘ [d]eceptively simple, surprisingly powerful and satisfyingly reassuring’. A book about feelings - and colours - it features a friendly, fuzzy monster. You know, the kind you’d find inhabiting Sesame Street. (Come to think of it, he does resemble Oscar the Grouch with that big, animated monobrow!) The little girl puts the Colour Monster’s feelings into separate jars. Use the template below to draw things that make you happy/ angry/sad etc. Look again at the book, focusing on one emotion at a time. Have each child choose a square from the corresponding pile of colored emotions squares to paste into their jar.A ‘I feel … when?’ worksheets (for children to design their own colour monsters and think about when they feel different emotions. How does music make you feel? Think of different songs/styles of music that make you happy, sad, angry etc. Make a list of words that the author links with each colour, e.g. yellow = bright and light, blue = gentle and alone. Can you think of synonyms for these words? So it came as no surprise to read that The Colour Monster’s creator, Anna Llenas, cites her art psychotherapy training as an influence. Llenas ‘currently acts as a teacher and art therapist specialising in art and emotional education.’ Her experience in these fields shines through her work - and makes The Colour Monster a valuable addition for any bookshelf.

Colour in some old bits of card, cut out some shapes, piece them together and see what you can create. (Interestingly, this is very similar to the way that Chris Haughton develops his art for books like A Bit Lost and Shh! We have a Plan.) Recap on the story of ‘The Colour Monster’. Parents may want to read the story again with the children or invite the children to tell them the story, using their own home-made monsters from last week’s resources. If you are looking for some engaging and hands-on printables to make learning about colors and emotions so much more fun, you have come to the right place! ‘The Color Monster’ by Anna Llenas is a great book to help little learners make more sense of all those feelings they feel, by connecting them with a more concrete thing – colors. It is a fabulous book for initiating social emotional learning activities with children in the early grades and the basis for this fun social emotional learning activity. The Color Monster Emotions Activity: Free Printable Prepare the activityIn this story, yellow refers to happiness, red is for anger and blue is linked to sadness. Do you agree with those colour choices? Why?