Emotional Workshop in Early Education: From Verbalisation to Lexical Invention

Abstract

Our article reports on a workshop conducted by a nursery school (extracurricular) facilitator about emotions, with ten or so 5-6-year-old children (spring 2022). Based on a posture of participant observation which allowed us to record the interactions, as well as based on the answers of the animator to a reflexive questionnaire, we will focus on the following questions: how can such a workshop bring children to better name and express their emotions through various ways (including the body)? In what way is the ‟Workshop” device, based on a community, conducive to this language learning? Finally, beyond the words and phrasemes which appeared during the workshop, how do the children come to neologise by proposing new words or locutions to accurately express their emotions? Thus, this lexical exploration work, carried out from a very young age, gives rise to a space for “émotissages” (Berdal-Masuy 2018) in order to forge links between emotions and learning.