Safe is ............ (PBs in Practice)

Great work, One thought to add here.
If a child has or is being abused they may well have no concept of feeling safe. If a child is unable to grasp the idea then this is a 'Early Warning' for workers to keep an eye out and if necessary follow up what might be happening and may been reporting. Also think this is wonderful (and essential) to be teaching the concepts at such a young age. It will give the child some useful tools if something is not OK.
Cheers from Di

Absolutely true, Di, thanks for that -- hopefully in talking about feeling frightened as well as feeling safe, we will be able to communicate to all our children the importance of recognising the feelings.

We read a story today, and it reminded me that not all resources are created equally!!! The book was about feeling frightened and it started off well; accessible examples for little ones, good illustrations etc., but then the character (a little girl) said "When I have to go upstairs by myself, I feel frightened...but then I tell myself to stop being silly..." Needless to say, I did some quick on-the-hop editing because feeling frightened isn't 'silly', and made a note to self about why we should never read a book to children that we haven't read ahead of time for quality assurance!

Thanks for this Judith and think I know the series of books your talking about. I now break the unwritten rule handed down to me by my parents about never writing in books and annotate sentences so that they are more empowering just in case I'm not up to 'thinking on my feet' that day or someone else wants to read the story. A regular edit of mine is changing 'How does that make you feel?' to 'How do you feel' or One-Step Remove it to 'How might someone feel about that.' All this making people feel this, that of the other is both disempowering and can lead to an awful lot of 'blaming and shaming'.

So glad your finding ways to teach so much PBs to young children

We are still coming up with new ways of embedding PBs in our nursery practice. Using The Bear Cards which I love (so do the children!), we have had self-registration for the past two days on big white pieces of paper with a choice of 4 teddy cards each day for each group with "How do you feel today?" at the top. I think I have had more fun trying to educate the staff and parents - asking them not to give 'f' words to the cards but rather let the children come to their own (often incredibly articulate and at times entertaining) notions of what the teds might be feeling, and suggesting they let the children not choose any if that is what they want to do etc. It has been really fab and i am so pleased that these little people are beginning to acknowledge and give language to their feelings as well as have their feelings accepted and respected by the adults who interact with them. Today, on my board, I had one of the really cross teddies and the little boys thought it was hilarious - one child who speaks Tamil and is a real little comic put his name under that teddy and then walked round "Grrr"ing at everyone with pointed eyebrows and clenched fists at the end of his rigid little arms. It was great. I know that is not at all how he felt when he came in, but he loved pretending to feel like it which is brilliant and just as valuable. The cards change every day, covering a range of feelings. Having tested them on my own children at home first, I had to buy a set for them too! Very engaging resource, and so versatile.