Babipur Book Club: Conker the Chameleon by Hannah Peckham
Conker the Chameleon
Conker the Chameleon by Hannah Peckham children’s book that explores feelings and mood. Combine with Grapat rainbow eggs as a sensory tool.
Children can have difficulty identifying their feelings and moods. We hear how important social and emotional skills are and how mindfulness can teach children how to self-regulate. But how can we do this in our home environment?
We have teamed up with Hannah Peckham @h.j.peckham young person counsellor and author of the illustrated children’s book Conker the Chameleon to explore how you could use our new Grapats Mandala Rainbow Eggs from Babipur as a mood tracker.
Mood Tracking
Tracking mood helps little ones identify their feelings, this encourages mindfulness as you are teaching your child to check in with how they are feeling in the moment. We often jump from day to day and hour to hour just reacting to what is happening around us instead of understanding what’s going on inside of us and how we feel in the moment, in turn we pass this on to our children. You can teach your child to stop and think about their feelings and open up a conversation with them. This can be simply by reading a book or in a game, learning through play is a great way for you both to learn about their emotions.
Conker the chameleon incorporates the zones of regulation into the book. This is a type of traffic light system that is used in many classrooms Red/Anger, Green/Happy, Blue/Sad, Yellow/Worried. The Grapat Rainbow Eggs have all these shades so you could look at how intensely they are feeling certain emotions as well. With the purple eggs left over why not add another emotion such as tired or silly or envy.
Linking colour with emotions
We suggest setting the tracker up by reading Conker the Chameleon together then talking about feelings and how they can link to colour. There are also interactive pages at the back of the book that help develop social emotional learning. By introducing the eggs with each colour representing a different emotion you allow your child to identify feelings at a reflective distance. It can be easier for a child to understand emotions when they have something visual to connect feelings to. Colour can easily provide this link.
Each day ask your child which feelings they have experienced. It could be just one colour or maybe it will be a few different ones. This can open up dialogue about what those feelings were, why they happened, how they felt and how they changed throughout the day. This is a useful tool to help children understand their changing emotions.
Putting the eggs in a bowl each day enables you to reflect back at the end of the week (alternatively you could use a mood tracker grid). Have a look at what colour comes up most often. This can be a helpful insight into our Childs internal world. It can also open up lines of communication enabling you to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on for your child. By opening up these conversations you are normalising talking about feelings and checking in with your own emotions. These are all vital skills they can take through life with them.
Watch out as we will be running a giveaway of our Grapat Mandala rainbow eggs, Grapat Trees and a Toys by Nature Twilight Playbase paired with Conker the Chameleon by Hannah Peckham over on the Babipur Instagram soon.
