“To everyone who has a rainbow in their heart, knowing that a rainbow needs both rain and sun.”
Elisa Paganelli
I love this dedication at the front of the book Sometimes: A Book of Feelings.
One of the things about being a large home educating family is that we really get to see the good, the bad and the ugly of each other.
Every day is a rainbow of feelings and we try hard to be open and honest with one another and work through our feelings.
Books like this one are so helpful in enabling the children to understand and explain what they are feeling and why.
We particularly like this one from Little Tiger Books as it follows a brother and sister as they navigate the highs and lows of their day.
This beautifully illustrated rhyming story shows siblings that their feelings are valid and that it is normal to feel a whole range of feelings often in the space of one day.
Alongside the gentle story we are given tips for managing difficult feelings.
I love that the book ends with a family cuddle and reminding us all that love is the strongest of all emotions and that often it is the people we love most that see and experience the full rainbow spectrum of our feelings.
A family trip to the beach begins with excitement and happiness until the children are caught out by the tide. The children have to find their courage and overcome their fear to make it safely back to the shore. The children run and play in the golden sands until their excitement is punctured when their kite gets tangled in a tree. They head home as the weather turns and are feeling gloomy until the sun shines again and they splash together in puddles feeling happy beneath the rainbow skies. The next scene is a familiar one, when excited play goes wrong and someone is embarrassed and gets cross and back themselves into a corner of bad feelings. Embarrassment turns to anger and the bad feeling spreads making others sad. This is the flashpoint in the story and something that is really helpful as a situation to talk through as a family. How can this problem be solved? How can the brother and sister help each other work through their feelings?
How can they move forward without dismissing each other’s feelings?
We have had some wonderful conversations around this and I know that we will refer back to this story when we need to.
We have also talked a lot about saying sorry and why it is important.
The spread about loneliness is very powerful and we talked about what we can do when someone is feeling left out.
The story ends with kindness and forgiveness, with peace restored and the sibling relationship stronger than before for all they have experienced together. The brother and sister return home together and this is a lovely page in the book to pause and talk about the feeling of belonging.
This is such a timely book when families have been spending long periods of time together when emotions have been running high.
I love that at the end of the rainbow the family are united with love, cuddles and cakes.
This is a really lovely lovely book and it is beautifully and sensitively done.
