Mood Mirror - A child’s first tool for Emotional Intelligence Age: Birth - 6 years Contents:
Baby safe mirror
Six removable facial expressions
Instructions
Develops:
Emotional Intelligence (EI) : This is defined as the ability to perceive, assess and manage our emotions, as well as those of others. Research professes that EI is a vital ingredient to successful living, even more so than the Intelligence Quotient (IQ).
Mood Mirror helps children learn to identify and label emotions. It provides a forum for discussion and eventual understanding of their own emotions. This provides the basis for learning to identify the emotions of others. The Mood Mirror provides the six emotions that can be distinguished by facial expression alone. These are called 'basic emotions'. They are: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear.
Imitation:
Learning by copying the behaviour of another person. From as little as two days, babies can imitate facial expressions, such as, tongue protrusion (disgust), mouth opening (surprise), lip protrusion (anger), as well as, happy and sad expressions. Imitation provides a powerful means of infants learning. They explore their social world, observing others and matching emotional expressions to them. This makes for beautiful bonding between parents, carers and child. Self awareness and Self Expressions: Self awareness is stimulated by children recognising that their expressions are similar to others. Babies under 15 months will enjoy the mirror as they see their reflection as that of another child. They will reach out to touch and interact with this ‘playmate’. From 15 months, toddlers recognise themselves in the mirror and self expression takes over. Toddlers will enjoy trying different facial expressive motions in front of the mirror as they are intrigued by what they can do. Observation and Language skills: Observation of the components of the face which make up an expression, is central to distinguishing between the emotions the Mood Mirror portrays. Applying labels to these emotions and describing your facial expressions develops language skills.
Social skills: The interplay with others through imitation and with their reflection in the mirror, develops their social play and awareness of others. These are two foundation skills for social development. Learning to identify emotions in themselves and others will aid their social relationships and emotional intelligence.
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