Social Emotional Learning Books for Children
Social Emotional Intelligence Books For Children and children’s well-being are important to parents, teachers and educators. SEL can be placed into 5 core competencies: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
Social Emotional Learning Books for Children Are Important Today
Social and emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of our own and others’ feelings – in the moment – and use that information to lead yourself and others. SEL is shaping kindness, friendships, feelings and emotions. In this SEL article, I interview Lori Vasquez. Lori has over a decade of experience in nursing. Specializing in mental health, Lori provides compassionate care to individuals of all ages experiencing mental health crises.
What is SEL – Social Emotional Learning? My Interview with Lori Vasquez, Board Certified and Licensed Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner:
In the video above, Lori Vasquez, who works with patients across all age groups, discusses the importance of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). The conversation highlights the crucial role that early exposure to SEL plays in a child’s long-term emotional and social development. Lori explains that missing certain developmental milestones early in life can lead to more severe challenges in adulthood, such as personality disorders, which are much harder to treat. SEL helps build essential skills like empathy and relationship-building, which are foundational for mental wellness across the lifespan.
Social Emotional Intelligence & Child Development: Why the Early Years are So Important – Early childhood Teacher, Victoria Strugatsky says:
We teach social-emotional learning books that can appear at a young age to help children navigate later on in life and to help them make sense of the environment and their community. Kids as young as two, three and four year old should know the difference between right and wrong and have their boundaries.
They should be able to respect themselves and respect their peers. Respect is so important to teach at a very early age. Kids need to learn acceptance. Kids need to be taught respect. Kids need to be taught boundaries, personal space, and what is right from wrong.
It is so important to talk about feelings. We need to be teaching little ones to differentiate t
heir feelings and how to read facial expressions. Ask kids, “What makes you feel the way you do?”
We teach rules, not just classroom rules – rules that they take into their daily life. These are life skills, basically. We learn to respect one another; we learn to share. We learn to accept. Acceptance is a huge part of social-emotional intelligence. We teach kids how to deal with their frustration and how to use their words to speak when something goes wrong. We teach them to use their hands to hug one another and give thumbs up — never for hitting or pushing. We teach children at a very young age that words can also hurt. So don’t do something to your friend if you don’t want it to be done to you.
Love, respect, appreciation, and acceptance — those are huge parts of day-to-day learning that are so important and crucial to managing stress in young kids.
Lisa Caprelli in Alabama with a Unicorn Jazz friend!
9 Social Emotional Learning Skills Unicorn Jazz teaches with children:
- Giving Back. We will share why it’s important to give back.
- Acceptance. Educating children on acceptance of others and of themselves creates a sense of justice, when you have a sense of justice you create a better and kinder world.
- Sharing, giving back, kindness.
- Compassion. Helping children understand what others are feeling, the impact of their own actions and the reasons behind why someone might feel a certain way is a valuable life skill for children because it: Encourages kindness, patience, acceptance and tolerance of the self and others. Having compassion cultivates a better understanding of others.
- Empathy; to love one another. Empathy is important because it can help build connection, regulate emotion, and promote helping behaviors. For kids, empathy can prevent bullying, help them make friends, and help them receive help from others.
- Friendship; helping and taking care of each other.
- Everyone is different; everyone is unique.
- Everyone deserves the same kind of love
- Respect. Even though others may not look the same as you do, we need to respect their needs, culture, and differences. Receiving respect from others is important because it helps us to feel safe and to express ourselves.
Download Free SEL Social Emotional Learning educator’s packet today from Teacher’s Pay Teachers!
By discovering with research and studying human behavior, it is essential that we help children to grow up to develop confidence, boldness, and self-acceptance.
I wrote social emotional learning books because I wish I had these kind of stories when I was in elementary school. Because I grew up by a single mom raising a family of six, and with poor communication, we had challenging times. Book like this would have helped me to understand my world around me and how to adapt to feelings and emotions at school and at home. ~Children’s author, Lisa Caprelli
GRAB THE FREE BOOK ONE CURRICULUM OF UNICORN JAZZ
Includes Social Emotional Learning pages for kids
I am an inquisitive mind by nature. Being the shy, introverted girl that people find hard to believe, I have grown up believing the way we communicate at an early age is important and can have a lifelong impact.
School librarians, counselors, principals and educators provide the data and the feedback is overwhelming: schools are WANTING more books that have lessons incorporating social emotional learning and development at an early age.
Social Emotional Learning Books for children are an important part of Unicorn Jazz‘s stories and messages.
SEL can be places into five core competencies: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making
Children’s unicorn books by Author Lisa Caprelli.
My generation didn’t grow up with stories or social emotional learning books for children. I made it a point to study human behavior my whole life.
I believe that there is transition thanks to innovative minds, thinkers and doers in the world. It makes me happy that the books I write do share messages woven through entertainment. It is comforting to know that a story and/or song can convey kindness and the power of believing in others.
By THE THING I DO show writer and children’s author, Lisa Caprelli
Sharing with children how words matter is very important to me. I have been doing virtual author visits and developing meaningful relationships on the subject of social emotional learning books for children,
WHAT IS SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING SO YOU CAN RECOGNIZE IT?
Social emotional skills and development is key to every child’s education and mental health development. Schools are being encouraged to incorporate social emotional learning. This then helps children perform better in their studies and also exhibit good behaviors at home. Social and emotional skills is the process through which children and adults:
- understand and manage emotions
- set and achieve positive goals
- feel and show empathy for others
- establish and maintain positive relationships, and
- make responsible decisions.
Caprelli reading Bee-ing Happy to first graders
The “Social Emotional Learning“ is the art of teaching children on how to apply the relevant attitude and expertise in managing of their feelings. The program can be combined in the school program or it can be taught on online school programs. It can also be taught at home and consists of the following categories:
Self Awareness
Self-awareness helps people to understand their emotions and their impact to their behaviors.Children who are aware of their emotions will not engage in destructive activities due to setbacks and anger.
Self-Management
Self- management assists an individual to maintain their feelings. The feelings include anger and setbacks.Self management therefore helps children to deal with the setbacks in a proper way.The means can include activities such as singing or reading motivational materials to manage the setbacks.
Relationship Skills
A relationship skill helps an individual to interact properly with other people.A child who has good relationship will always relate properly with other children, family and the people of the society.The child will not engage in activities such as peer fights.
Social Awareness
Social awareness promotes empathy for others. This is through understanding the uniqueness of other people’s problems.The child will always be willing to assist other people who are facing problems.
Decision Making
The decision making encourages people to make appropriate choices that will impact positively on their life and the life of others. Poor decisions make children participate in unlawful activities, thus affecting negatively on their education.
For more information on social emotional learning books for children and SEL, there are numerous resources and books online. We are creating a list of books that relate to this subject. If you are an author and would like to submit your book for our top 20 list of SEL books, contact us on this site!
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“We just read your book, Unicorn Jazz, as our morning read and may I say how much my daughter loves it. It has three of our favorite things: (1) Message: Loving the skin you’re in. We are all different and unique and are supposed to be that way. (2) Music: we are both terrible singers but love to sing our hearts out even when we don’t know the words and (3) Animals: KayLynne is crazy about animals.
Overall, the message of Unicorn Jazz is close to my heart because I truly believe that once I made the decision and owned that, “I too, have something to say, and that is why I am a writer. I use my voice through books to let everyone know:
“You are more than enough, you were born complete, you are uniquely made and therefore you are beautiful.” Thanks for writing such a beautiful story. -Karlene Froling, Children’s book author, KaysHeart.com
As parents, when we tell our kids to always be smart, we don’t just mean that they should pay attention and get good grades in school – that’s only one part of the message. What we really mean is that our children should think with their hearts just as much as their minds. Or in other words, it’s not what we think that matters, it’s how we feel about it too that’s just as important. However, being able to teach our kids the subtle difference between thinking with your head and thinking with your feelings is a whole other matter. Luckily, that’s where introducing our kids to the value of social-emotional intelligence comes into play.
Defining Social-Emotional Intelligence Social-emotional intelligence is a biological tool that helps build not only behavioral self-regulation (environmental adaptation, working memory, impulse control) but also the personal aspects that lead to a high level of executive functioning. Furthermore, children with high levels of social-emotional intelligence tend to show more resilience in the face of pressure and have a clearer sense of situational and self-awareness within dyadic relationships and group settings.
Described by researchers as “the skill needed to navigate through education in the 21st century”, social-emotional intelligence (SEI) can be defined as a child’s ability to regulate their emotions and behaviors in a positive way in social settings. More specifically, SEI is measured as a child’s learning experience regarding matters of thought, feeling, and general behavioral patterns as manifested through biological and environmental factors. As such, researchers on the topic have proposed many alternative names to SEI, including “noncognitive functioning”, “character smarts”, and “soft skills”. Why Building SEI is Crucial During Child Development Building social-emotional skills is vital for children during the years of 4 to 6 as they begin to conceptualize the world around them, especially the daily interactions they have with their peers and classmates.
As a result, children with high SEI tend to develop stronger bonds with their acquaintances, teachers, and are even shown to achieve higher academic success and motivation. Furthermore, children with higher SEI are more likely to engage in peer interactions in a positive manner by exhibiting self-regulation, such as toy sharing, cooperating in roleplay, and team goal-planning. Indeed, SEI and behavioral regulation go hand-in-hand in that children with higher SEI levels tend to have better control over their behavior, which in turn leads to better results in social settings and subsequent peer relationship development and maintenance.
The Downsides of Having Low Social-Emotional Skills On the other end of the SEI spectrum, children with lower social-emotional skills than their peers tend to have fewer opportunities to develop their self-regulation due to peer avoidance or even rejection. This of course can lead to a plethora of negative self-regulating behaviors, such as aggression, bullying, reckless hyperactivity, or even complete social withdrawal, which in turn leads to even fewer chances for positive behavioral regulation in the long term. These issues are not only linked to peer relationships, but also those with teachers, authority figures, and how motivated a child is geared towards academic and extracurricular success for their future.