How can you tell they’ve got it: Naming Your Feelings?

If they’ve got it, you’ll see things like: emotional literacy research; Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children (HeadStart.gov); emotion vocabulary development 4-11 years (PMC). Or just try it together: When your child seems upset, excited, or frustrated, can they stop and tell you what emotion they're feeling — even if they can't fully explain why?

Personal & Social Development Self-Awareness Ages 5–6

Naming Your Feelings

Your child can notice what they feel and give it a name — happy, cross, or worried. Naming it is the first step to understanding it.

In curriculum terms

Notice what you are feeling and put a name to it — being able to label an emotion is the first step to understanding and managing it

Ages are typical, not deadlines — follow your child’s pace. How to help at home →

How to tell they’ve got it

Tick these off as you see them — no test required.

emotional literacy research
Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children (HeadStart.gov)
emotion vocabulary development 4-11 years (PMC)

🖨 Print this page to keep the checklist — it prints beautifully.

Try this together

When your child seems upset, excited, or frustrated, can they stop and tell you what emotion they're feeling — even if they can't fully explain why?

Where this sits on the map

Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.

Builds on

Vocabulary: selfages 5–10Noticing and naming feelings requires the basic vocabulary of self-awareness and reflection

Feeling of not understandingages 6–7Naming what you are feeling is emotional comprehension monitoring — the universal habit of noticing what's happening inside applied to emotional experience

Naming Your Feelingsthis skill · ages 5–6

Unlocks

Feelings Versus Actionsages 6–8Understanding that feelings and actions are separate requires first being able to name and identify what you are feeling

solid = must come firstdashed = helps

Curriculum alignment

Where this fits in the official school curriculum — our best automated guess, not yet checked by a person.

Show candidate curriculum codes · 2 VIC

Australian Curriculum v9 candidate

This skill sits outside the F–6 Australian Curriculum — no candidate code matched (v0.1).

Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only

VC2HPFP04low confidenceHealth and Physical Education · Foundation · Personal, Social and Community Health – Health Education strand

VC2HP2P04low confidenceHealth and Physical Education · Levels 1 and 2 · Personal, Social and Community Health – Health Education strand

These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.

Nearby on the map

Vocabulary: selfages 5–10 Feelings Versus Actionsages 6–8 Patterns in Your Own Reactionsages 7–9 Your Impact on Othersages 8–9

All Self-Awareness skills →