The Chocolate Covered Cookie Tantrum

A MUST READ Book! One of my coworkers introduced me to this book and I have to read it every year to my students because they all can relate! I  am a HUGE believer in the importance of social-emotional learning for kids and especially for the younger learners. I truly believe that before children can begin to learn and concentrate on academics they need to have their behavior under control which is why in my classroom I put such a huge emphasis on social-emotional learning.

In this social-emotional story, the little girl wants a cookie that another girl has but her mom says no  She slowly explodes into a complete meltdown over the cookie (many of you will be able to relate to this I’m sure).  Her mom tries to talk her through it and in the end her body is so tired from throwing the tantrum that she falls asleep.  If you haven’t read this book it is a  MUST and you also MUST use a lot of expression as it makes the book even better (make sure to throw a tantrum as you read so your kids can see what one looks like HA!)

To extend the story, I made an activity to go along with it. Since the book was talking a lot about emotions, I decided to have my kiddos continue the discussion of emotions and make emotion cookies.  I glued 8 white circles with emotions on them onto aluminum foil (to resemble a cookie sheet).  My kiddos then drew a matching face on the brown cardboard cookies to match. 

I also let them glue on 2 chocolate chips for the eyes (this obviously was their favorite part-I also let them eat one or two to keep the activity motivating HA)! As they drew, ate and glued, we talked about how each cookie might be feeling and why.  We also talked about which cookie looks like the girl’s emotion in the story. There was so much learning happening here and of course they asked me to read the story again and again.