Educating Young Children- Learning and teaching in the early childhood years26 Emotions are universal. Children experience

hundreds of different emotions each day. Emotions, and the thinking associated with these emotions, are what trigger children to be affected by the people and events around them. Children initially rely on facial clues to tell them what someone else is feeling. The core emotions joy, anger, sadness, fear (Campos and Barrett 1984) – are easier for children to identify as they concentrate their attention on how the person looks rather than on the context of the situation. As children grow and develop, they more accurately recognize a wider range of emotional expressions. They progress from relying on facial clues alone to considering situational clues that could elicit certain emotional responses. As children mature