It shouldn't be surprising to know that we are not born able to understand or regulate (manage) our emotions but people do expect children to learn to pretty quickly. Most studies suggest children aren't able to do this until at least seven years old (and take many more years to develop it). A great way to help this is to talk about emotions - what they look and feel like and how we might act when we feel that way.
Last year, I made these emotion stones so that we can make different types of faces with different expressions and talk about what they are feeling and why. In fact, a lot of grown ups are drawn to them, it's quite addictive to change the features and see what it looks like.
The stones are ones we picked up at the beach. We washed them and I painted them with a white acrylic base before drawing on them with some permanent markers. I then sealed them with some PVA glue to make them water resistant and keep the colour. Mine are double sided to make it more interesting but they don't have to be. We've also added to them with ones the children have made themselves.
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