Emotional Regulation and Mindfulness for Preschool Children

Description

The Preschool years are very delicate when it comes to a child’s emotional development.

Helping young children to understand and handle their emotions in a balanced and positive way is one of the greatest challenges teachers face in early education.

At this early stage, kids often experience intense and rapidly shifting emotions, and they lack the emotional vocabulary and the self-regulation skills needed to manage them. Without careful guidance from an adult figure, frustration or overstimulation can easily overwhelm them.

For this reason, teachers play a central role in helping children make sense of these early emotional experiences.

They can model calm behaviour, provide language for feelings, and create supportive routines that encourage self-regulation.

This course is designed with the everyday Preschool reality in mind. It will introduce educators to the principles of emotional regulation and mindfulness, and it will offer them practical and age-appropriate tools to support socioemotional development in Preschool children.

Mixing pedagogy and child development theory, this course will provide teachers and early years professionals with evidence-based strategies useful to foster emotional awareness, empathy, self-regulation, and emotional expression in their classrooms.

Through hands-on practice, during the course, participants will explore how mindfulness and emotional regulation can be introduced in age-appropriate ways through play, movement, storytelling, and creative activities.

They will engage in experimental activities like breathing techniques, movement-based games, creative and sensory-based mindfulness, and compassion-focused practices.

Participants will also explore more creative approaches, learning how to use stories, music, drawing, and sensory play to help children identify, express, and process their emotions.

By the end of the course, participants will return to their classrooms with a deeper understanding of how emotional regulation for Preschool children can actually work and with a toolkit of practical strategies that they’ll be able to adapt to their own teaching contexts.

They will be able to guide children in expressing emotions constructively, strengthen children’s self-awareness, prevent and manage emotional outbursts, foster resilience, empathy, and well-being, and create an emotionally positive learning environment.

Concept by Maria Del Monte

Learning outcomes

The course will help participants to:

• Recognise the main stages of emotional development in Preschool children and understand the foundational role of emotional regulation in early childhood;
• Learn and apply simple co-regulation strategies (such as adjusting tone of voice, body posture, and presence) to guide children through moments of emotional distress or dysregulation;
• Practice short and playful mindfulness-based techniques (e.g., breathing, movement, creative mindfulness) suitable for a Preschool learning environment;
• Incorporate creative, artistic, and expressive activities (e.g., art, music, storytelling, and sensory play) that can help children identify and process emotions in a healthy way;
• Model and encourage empathy and compassion through simple classroom routines, group work, and peer interactions;
• Design age-appropriate and practical activities that create calm spaces, reduce emotional outbursts, and promote self-regulation in young learners.

Tentative schedule

Day 1 – Course introduction

• Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
• Icebreaker activities;
• Presentations of the participants’ schools.

Emotional development in early childhood

• Foundations of emotional development in early childhood;
• Understanding emotional regulation in Preschool children: challenges and developmental needs;
• Introduction to mindfulness: principles, benefits, and its relevance in early education.

Day 2 – Mindfulness for self-regulation

• Types of mindfulness and how they can be adapted to a Preschool learning environment;
• Breathing techniques and simple routines to support self-regulation;
• Creative and sensorial mindfulness techniques and activities (movements, sound…);
• Using art, music, and play as tools for emotional processing.

Day 3 – Communication and emotional literacy

• Positive communication and positive discipline;
• Assertive communication strategies for educators and children;
• Fostering empathy in Preschool: modelling and guided practice.

Day 4 – Emotional regulation in action

• The science of emotions: how emotional regulation develops in early childhood;
• Mindfulness strategies to support emotional balance;
• Storytelling, songs, and daily transitions as “mindful moments”;
• Conflict management and problem-solving strategies.

Day 5 – From theory to classroom practice

• Implementing mindfulness in Preschool classrooms;
• Compassion-based approaches to teaching and learning;
• Collaborative group work: co-designing classroom activities;
• Drafting an emotional regulation plan “personalized” for participants’ own classrooms.

Day 6 – Course closure and cultural activities

• Course evaluation: round-up of acquired competences, feedback, and discussion;
• Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
• Excursion and other external cultural activities.

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