How to Use a Feelings Detective Notebook with Children

A key aspect of social emotional development in early childhood is emotional literacy— learning to recognize, name, and manage emotions. Young children build emotional awareness by paying attention to how their faces look and how their bodies feel. A feelings detective notebook is an effective way to nurture emotional literacy and develop emotional awareness. In this article, learn about the benefits of a feelings detective notebook at home or school and follow the simple steps to preparing and implementing one with young children. 

What is a Feelings Detective Notebook and Why Does it Matter?

A feelings detective notebook is a powerful tool for fostering emotional awareness in children.  Through writing and drawing to capture emotional experiences, children and adults gain a valuable tool for reflection, discussion, and growth. 

The feelings detective notebook offers as a safe space for children to document their emotional experiences, helping them build emotional literacy. With consistent use, children gain valuable insight into how emotions affect their bodies and minds, setting them up for better emotional regulation and well-being as they grow.

Using a written notebook allows children to revisit emotions, how they felt in their bodies, and how they handled those emotions, supporting reflection and brainstorming for how to handle future emotions. Recording emotional experiences in a feelings detective notebook gives children a way to process emotions, while simultaneously providing adults with opportunities to discuss and support children’s emotional understanding.

Feeling Clues

A feelings detective notebook is an emotional awareness strategy, highlighted in the We Find Feelings Clues series, that encourages children to reflect, draw, and/or write how they are feeling

This process supports them in learning to recognize physiological feelings clues—like changes in their facial expressions, body sensations, and tone of voice—that help identify emotions. A feelings detective notebook gives a place to draw, write, or record about feelings clues and emotional experiences. 

How to Support Children’s Use of a Feelings Detective Notebook

Get Ready: Help Children Understand Feelings Clues

Step one is helping children understand that they can find feelings clues in their body. Here are two ways to achieve this.

Explicitly modeling your own feelings, such as “I notice my neck is tight. That tells me I might be feeling overwhelmed,” or “I can feel that my cheeks are so tight because I smile so big when I am happy.”

Talk about how children “read” other clues in their body. What messages do they get from their body? Does their body tell them when they are hungry? What does that feel like for them? Talking about how hunger, thirst, pain, and having to use the bathroom all come with their own clues in the body. Extend to thinking about emotions. What clues do they feel when they are angry or sad or excited or calm?

Consider thinking about four different prompts to talk about different kinds of body clues:

• Facial Expressions: “My face looks…”
• Vocalizations: “My voice sounds…”
• Physical Sensations: “In my body, I feel….”
• Sensory Needs: “My body wants to….”

Get Set: Help Children to Make Their Feelings Detective Notebooks

Step two includes children in choosing a notebook that aligns with their preferences. You want children to feel ownership for their feelings detective notebook.

Here are a few considerations:

• Consider notebook size. Do children want a small one that can fit in their pocket? Do they prefer larger sketchbooks?
• Consider notebook formatting and design. Do children prefer to have pages that can pull out? Lined or unlined pages?
• Encourage children to decorate their notebook to reflect their personalities.

For children who can draw simple people and faces, having blank pages to record their feelings and experiences is likely to support their growth. For children who aren’t at that stage of drawing, you can prepare notebooks by using the Feelings Detective Body Clues Map or by drawing an outline of a body on each page. Children can choose a color and then shade in the part of the body where they feel an emotion. For example, a child might pick green for excitement and color in a green smile, green hands, and green feet to represent feeling excitement most strongly in their face and limbs.

Go: Help Children Use Their Feelings Detective Notebooks

The third and final step involves supporting children in using their feelings detective notebooks.

Here is what you can do to help them:

• Encourage children to draw their feelings clues and/or simple causes of emotions, such as a balloon popping.
• Ask children about their drawings. What happened? How did they feel? What clues did they notice in their bodies?
• If children are wishing for your support, help them label their pictures with the emotion word or add dictations as they retell about a story or an experience to increase their emotional literacy.
• Model drawing your own feelings detective picture, sharing how you felt, what clues you noticed, and what had happened.
• Ask children what they did to feel better or to help their bodies regulate. For example, “You were so excited about your birthday. How did you get your body calmer to decorate for your party?” or “It was hard to feel frustrated. What do you want to try next time you feel like that?”
• Celebrate children’s effort and emerging skills. This might sound like, “Wow, you really noticed a lot of clues in your body!” or “You remembered how to ask for help when you felt upset.”

Children and adults gain a valuable tool for reflection, discussion, and growth through a feelings detective notebook. Of course, there are many ways to support children’s deeper understanding of emotions, and a feelings detective notebook is just one of them. Practicing the skill of thinking about their bodies and feelings with curiosity and talking about their emotions with trusted adults set children up for skills that support their emotional well-being as they grow.