/2014/04/saudade-or-why-its-good-to-name-your-feelings-with-help-from-aliki-cristina-branco-ana-moura-and-a-compassionate-school-inspector/ Supporting children's language, communication and learning Wed, 24 Sep 2014 07:59:01 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3 /2014/04/saudade-or-why-its-good-to-name-your-feelings-with-help-from-aliki-cristina-branco-ana-moura-and-a-compassionate-school-inspector/#comment-7938 Tue, 27 May 2014 15:22:52 +0000 /?p=1026#comment-7938 Hello Sally Ann,
Thank you for replying. Your reply is quite fascinating!
You may want to find out about the work of my friends and colleagues Sue Thomas and Katja O’Neill, who have developed a scheme for helping children as young as two express their feelings through using words and key signs from British Sign language (BSL). It’s very exciting to see children as young as two being able to explain that they feel FRUSTRATED!!!!! instead of just talking about being SAD (which as we adults are aware, are two entirely different things!)
Please visit http://www.sign4learning.co.uk/ for more info
Thanks again and best wishes
Michael
PS Listening to Ana Maura is the best way of instantly identifying what SAUDADE means!

]]> /2014/04/saudade-or-why-its-good-to-name-your-feelings-with-help-from-aliki-cristina-branco-ana-moura-and-a-compassionate-school-inspector/#comment-7937 Tue, 27 May 2014 07:42:53 +0000 /?p=1026#comment-7937 Hi Michael,
I read your post with great interest and could relate to so much of what you were saying. I have spent many years trying to help children develop a language of feelings in order to use their words rather than ‘tricky’ behaviours to communicate with adults and other children how they are feeling and what they need. I particularly remember the 4 year old who was able to say his head felt all ‘scribbly’ when he was starting to feel restless sitting on the carpet in a large group and the young lady who built a soft den and surrounded herself with her favourite books and toys to show us what ‘safe’ felt like to her. Currently I love using Sometimes I feel Sunny by Gillian Shields & Georgie Birkett with very young children. In my experience they are so good at learning lots of ‘feeling’ words and quickly move away from the ‘mad’, ‘sad’, ‘bad’ and ‘glad’.
Thanks again for sharing your post – I feel really hopeful when I hear about people who also believe in emotional literacy and helping children, from as early an age as possible, know what safe feels like. Because when people feel safe and know how to recreate this feeling, they are free to learn.
PS Will be adding ‘Saudade’ to my emotional vocabulary and sharing it people regardless of age.

]]> /2014/04/saudade-or-why-its-good-to-name-your-feelings-with-help-from-aliki-cristina-branco-ana-moura-and-a-compassionate-school-inspector/#comment-7932 Fri, 25 Apr 2014 12:31:21 +0000 /?p=1026#comment-7932 Abrigad Selma!!!
Michael

]]> /2014/04/saudade-or-why-its-good-to-name-your-feelings-with-help-from-aliki-cristina-branco-ana-moura-and-a-compassionate-school-inspector/#comment-7931 Fri, 25 Apr 2014 11:40:02 +0000 /?p=1026#comment-7931 Lovely post.

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