Name the Feeling First: What California's Preschool Foundations Ask, and How Bao Does It

"How does Mia FEEL?" Bao asks it on the first spread where something goes wrong, and he keeps asking it. Sad. Frustrated. Silly. Small. That question is the whole of Book 4: Kit Has Feelings, and it turns out to be the first thing the State of California now asks a preschool to teach.

Where the topic comes from

In 2024 the California Department of Education published new Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations, the document every state preschool and TK classroom in California is asked to plan against. It has nine domains. Social and Emotional Development is one of them, and its first strand is called Self. Inside that strand sit four sub-strands: Self-Awareness, Emotional Knowledge, Regulating Emotions and Behaviors, and Social Awareness. Emotional Knowledge is the plain one. Can the child recognize a feeling, in themselves and in someone else, and put a word on it?

CASEL, the group whose five-competency framework most social-emotional curricula are built on, files the same skill under Self-Awareness. Two different documents, one skill: label the feeling.

Why the label matters more than the description

Most children's books do feelings through the body. A tight tummy. A wobbly lip. Cheeks that get hot. Those are fine as a second channel, but a toddler cannot use them as a first one. "My tummy is tight" gives a three-year-old nothing to say to a friend. "I feel frustrated" does. The word is the tool. Once a child has it, they can hand it to you, and you can do something with it.

That is why the books in this series name the feeling out loud, every time, before anything else happens. It is the one place where the writing rule and the early childhood research point the same way.

How Book 4 does it

Book 4 revisits the exact scenes of Book 3, where Kit and Naya spotted puzzles around the neighborhood, and runs them through a new lens. Mia's juice tips over. "How does Mia FEEL?" Sad. Mr. Gomez cannot open his jar. Frustrated. The dog walker is tangled in three leashes. Silly. Each spread pairs the scene with one big, expressive face a toddler can point at and copy.

Then the book slows down. A little girl cannot reach the water fountain, and her feeling is quieter than the others. Small. The page gives it extra room on purpose, because not every feeling is loud, and the quiet ones are the ones adults miss.

Two later books lean on the same habit. In Book 7, Kit's invention collapses and his lip wobbles before anything else happens. In Book 13, a kid at school claims Kit's idea, and the story stops to name what that feels like ("yucky inside") before anyone talks.

What you can do

• Ask Bao's question once per page and wait. "How does Mia feel?" Then nothing. The silence is where the label gets found.
• Keep four face cards near the reading spot: happy, sad, frustrated, silly. A child who has no word yet can point.
• Use the same word for your own feeling that day. "I felt frustrated when the printer jammed." The label travels.

The free educator guide for Book 4 has circle-time questions, classroom activities, a family sheet, and a standards table for NAEYC, the NGSS practices, and CASEL. Tonight, when the juice tips over at your own table, try the question before the paper towel.

Sources

• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations: Social and Emotional Development (2024). Original PDF. Archived copy on littlesparksbooks.com (PDF), saved in case the original moves.
• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations overview page (nine domains). www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/psfoundations.asp
• CASEL, What Is the CASEL Framework? (the five competencies). casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/

Chris Kuczynski is an engineer turned registered patent attorney, a preschool co-founder, and a dad. He is the author of Kit's Little Sparks, a 20-book STEM series that gives children ages 2 to 4 the social and emotional foundations of the inventor's mindset. It is the first of four age-tiered series for readers ages 2 to 12.