All of our emotions are swirling inside of use. It's useful to be able to identify them. This is the message from the Emotion Detective in the Little SPOT of Feelings book from Diane Alber. One of the activities in the Little SPOT SEL Educators Guide is to make your own scribble spot crayon. I loved the idea of this, it a very clear visual representation of all those emtions being mixed up inside of us.
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My children picked out the coloured crayon that represented each emotion and scribbled it onto their blank scribble SPOT which is also included in the appendix of the Educators Guide.
About The Little SPOT Educators Guide
I would recommend getting the digital version of the Educators Guide because it made printing worksheets much easier. The PDF version also has the email you used to purchase it printed on each page. I wasn't thrilled with the look of this and it makes me hesitate before sharing our craft activities on social media. But I understand that copyright is an issue when selling digital products and this must be a way to circumvent it.
When it came to peeling the wrappers off the crayons it was a bit tricky for their little hands. Even breaking them seemed difficult and that is something children usually have no problem with! We put the broken crayons into silicone cup cakes cups and baked them at 180c for 5 minutes. This was a lower temperature and time than what was recommended in the Educator guide.
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I added more light colours
to the crayons |
After they came out of the oven we had to leave them to cool. I was a little dismayed that the black we used to represent grey anxiety and the blue that represented sadness seemed to dominate the new circular scribble spot crayon. The yellow (happiness) and pink (love) also seemed to have blended into the other colours. I tried remelting them and adding more of the positive emotion colours while the children were playing. I also used a toothpick to try and swirl the colours together a little more. If you are making these I would recommend keeping those strong negative colours to a minimum. The end result wasnt as pretty as I was hoping for but the children certainly didnt mind and happily pointed out what the colours represented while using them to draw new pictures.
✅Pros
A really good way to use broken crayons.
The activity brings up a discussion of which colours represent each emotion.
Clear visual representation of the mix of feelings inside all of us.
❌Cons
It is fiddly to peel and break crayons.
After melting there was an unbalanced representation of emotions as colours mixed together.
Adult supervision handling the oven and hot wax.
We love the Little SPOT SEL series and I have written several posts about it recently because it is currently dominating our after school craft activity time.
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