The emotion balloon

How it works

The emotion balloon shows us that emotions can be small, but also very big. It visualises on a child's scale the gradations of emotions and their regulation. Because when we want to control an emotion, we do not conjure it away, but try to shrink the emotion, just like a balloon can shrink.

Can your preschooler also use such a balloon at home at a later time?

We are happy to give you the instructions and supplies. Provide your own balloons in the colours yellow, green, blue and red.

Choose a balloon in the appropriate feeling colour. Yellow is happy, red is angry, blue is sad and green is scared. This colour legend is the same all over the emotion theme, which makes preschoolers become more and more familiar with it.

Ask when your child has felt this way before. Try to come up with a concrete example situation from your child's world. Ask about the gradation of that feeling by first inflating the balloon a little bit and then re-inflating it until the preschooler indicates that the size of the feeling is correct in the example.

Make a knot in the balloon and give the following command:

'Take a nose. Stick this nose in the middle of your balloon. Now find your own eyes and mouth that match your feeling. Also pay attention to their size: if your balloon is big, choose big eyes and a big mouth. If your balloon is small, choose small eyes and a small mouth. Stick them in the right place on the balloon.'

Afterwards, briefly discuss the result.