Raising good humans
Helping kids build social-emotional skills like self-awareness, social awareness, and emotional literacy is more important now than ever.
We’re beyond excited to release Me — our newest app, the fifth in the Digital Toys series — next week and not a moment too soon. Like other Digital Toys apps, Me encourages creative thinking. But it’s also our first app specifically designed to support kids’ socio-emotional development.
Me gives kids a safe place to tell their stories, express their identities and feelings, and to document the world around them. Kids can respond to 100s of questions about their feelings and preferences, their families, friends, schools, and homes to create vibrant, dynamic self-portraits in photos, GIFs, pictures, words, and recordings.
At a time when teachers are reporting an increase in bullying and anxiety among kids in their classrooms (Tinybop’s CEO and founder, Raul, has seen it in his kid’s classroom, too), our goal with Me is to help kids build skills like self-awareness, social awareness, and emotional literacy.
These skills are essential to children’s ability to positively contribute to the world and to their academic success. Research suggests that the better kids understand themselves, the more able they are to be empathetic and understand others. Teaching empathy can help combat bullying, peer cruelty, and the mental health epidemic.
Me will be ready to play on November 3rd. Sign up for our newsletter to get an automatic heads up. In the meantime, here are some more ideas to help support your kids’ social and emotional development.
Tips and resources
- Teaching your child emotional agility, The New York Times
- How to raise kinder, less entitled kids, Washington Post
- Teaching character to kids of all ages, Common Sense Media
- How parents can cultivate empathy in children, Harvard University
- Why kids need to journal, Parent.co
- Learning social emotional skills in the 21st century, PBS
- Emotion coaching, University of California at Berkeley
- Teaching your child to identify and express emotions,Vanderbilt University
- Raising race-conscious children, A Cup of Jo
To read aloud
To watch
Have something to add to this list? Let us know! Leave a comment below, email hi@tinybop.com or tweet to @tinybop. Thank you!
Originally published at tinybop.com.