Left Continue shopping
Your Order

You have no items in your cart

Promotion
Read more
Sweet Little Learners - Everything Kindergarten

Identifying Sad Feelings. Kindergarten Self-Regulation Read-Aloud Lesson and Activities-

$2.99

IDENTIFYING SAD FEELINGS


Kindergarten Self-Regulation Read-Aloud Lesson and Activities

Help young learners recognize sadness and explore supportive responses with this gentle, ready-to-teach Kindergarten self-regulation lesson.

Created around When Sadness Is at Your Door by Eva Eland, this resource combines a thoughtful read-aloud conversation with an open-ended Sadness and Support drawing activity. Children notice facial, body and contextual clues that may suggest sadness and consider different forms of comfort, care and support.

The lesson presents sadness as a valid emotion rather than something children must quickly fix or eliminate. Students may work with a current, remembered or completely imagined scenario. Personal disclosure and sharing are always optional.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

  • Complete educator lesson plan

  • Big idea and learning focus

  • Student-friendly learning goal

  • Success criteria

  • Materials and emotion vocabulary

  • Minds On emotion activity

  • Before-, during- and after-reading prompts

  • Step-by-step Sadness and Support activity

  • Consolidation prompts

  • Assessment look-fors

  • Observation, conversation and product documentation

  • Differentiation for a range of learners

  • Multilingual learner support

  • Communication and accessibility options

  • Emotional-safety considerations

  • Beginning, developing and independently applying next steps

  • Calm-corner extension

  • Home connection

  • Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum 2026 connections

  • U.S. Common Core Kindergarten connections

  • Sadness and Support student template

  • Eight optional support-choice cards

FEATURED READ ALOUD

When Sadness Is at Your Door by Eva Eland

The book is not included and must be obtained separately.

SUPPORT CHOICES INCLUDE

  • Talking to a trusted person

  • Spending time in a quiet space

  • Holding a comfort object

  • Drawing or writing

  • Listening to something calm

  • Taking slow breaths

  • Moving the body

  • Asking for something else

Every strategy is presented as an optional choice. The resource reinforces that different forms of support work for different people.

SKILLS EXPLORED

  • Identifying sadness

  • Noticing facial, body and contextual clues

  • Developing emotion vocabulary

  • Communicating verbally and non-verbally

  • Listening and responding during a read-aloud

  • Expressing an idea through drawing

  • Identifying possible sources of comfort and care

  • Respecting individual preferences

  • Beginning to understand the feelings of others

ONTARIO KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM 2026

This resource includes meaningful connections to:

  • Strand A: Foundations of Language and Mathematics

  • A1: Oral and Non-Verbal Communication

  • Strand C: Self-Regulation and Well-Being

  • C15.5: Developing an understanding of others’ feelings and responding with care

  • C16.5: Communicating what makes them happy or unhappy

U.S. COMMON CORE KINDERGARTEN

Relevant connections include:

  • RL.K.1: Asking and answering questions about key details

  • SL.K.1: Participating in collaborative conversations

  • SL.K.4: Describing familiar people, places, things and events

  • W.K.3: Using drawing, dictating and writing to communicate an event

  • L.K.6: Using vocabulary acquired through conversations and read-alouds

DIFFERENTIATION AND ACCESSIBILITY

Students may participate through:

  • Speech

  • Gestures

  • Visual selection

  • Drawing

  • Labelling

  • Dictation

  • AAC

  • Adult scribing

The resource includes visual choices, sentence frames, adapted-material suggestions, first-language connections and options for working privately.

PERFECT FOR

  • Kindergarten and Pre-K

  • Ontario FDK classrooms

  • Whole-group instruction

  • Small-group learning

  • Self-regulation lessons

  • Social-emotional learning

  • Read-aloud extensions

  • Calm-corner instruction

  • Guidance lessons

  • Homeschool Kindergarten

  • Early intervention

  • Supply-teacher plans

This lesson helps children understand that sadness is valid, support is personal and everyone deserves more than one way to communicate what they need.

PLEASE NOTE

When Sadness Is at Your Door is not included with this resource. This independently created educational resource is not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by the author or publisher.