As a brand ambassador for The Moodsters, I love helping spread the word about the importance of helping children develop emotional intelligence (EQ) skills. The Moodsters are five fun, funny, and wise little “feelings detectives”; their detective tools (otherwise known as toys!) teach kids about emotions. This month I’m pleased to present a guest post from Moodsters creator Denise Daniels—followed by a giveaway of the Moodster Mirror!

First, here’s Denise:

“One of the things I love about watching children is how unself-conscious they are—their faces are wide open to every feeling they experience, from joy to tragedy and back again! Yet children themselves often have no idea that what they’re feeling on the inside is reflected in facial expressions on the outside. Making that connection is the beginning of emotional intelligence, or EQ. Emotional intelligence is the process by which children learn to recognize, understand and manage their emotions.

Decades of research shows that children who learn EQ skills are more likely to do well in all aspects of life—socially, academically, physically, psychologically. And that’s where our colorful little detectives, The Moodsters, come in! Through humor, entertainment, and play, The Moodsters teach children the fundamentals of feelings, setting them on the road to emotional intelligence.

Our curriculum was created along with Marc Brackett, Ph.D., Director of Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, using his “RULER method” to teach children the five components of emotional intelligence: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions.

The first of these skills is to learn to recognize emotions. So I created the Moodster Mirror, which allows children to see what their own emotions “look like” on their faces, and to help them recognize the emotions of others—the key to empathy. See more information below about how the Moodster Mirror, and prepare to have plenty of fun and lots of enlightening conversations with your child about the fascinating world of feelings!”

—Denise Daniels, Creator of The Moodsters

Metro Mom Club: Mood Mirror Giveaway

Moodster Mirror™ and Storybook: The Moodster Mirror helps children make the connection between feelings on the inside and facial expressions on the outside. Kids make a happy, sad, angry, scared, or loving face into the Moodster Mirror, and they are able to see what these feelings look like on the outside. By turning the dial, kids select the matching Moodster to hear the character’s wisdom about that particular feeling, which helps kids recognize their feelings and non-verbal cues. Includes full-color, 32 page storybook, “A Time to be Kind”. Ages 3+