Teaching Empathy Through Play

The Kimochi line of toys was born out of a desire to teach children about their emotions through play and interaction with others.

Kimochi means “feeling” in Japanese. The colorful plush pillows have a feeling word printed on one side,with a facial expression on the other. Each set of toys comes with a 32-page Feeling Guide written by a nationally-renowned child communication expert, Ellen Pritchard Dodge, M.Ed. CCC-SLP. The Feeling Guide has fun descriptions of each character’s personality as well as tips and exercises for parents that use the toys to increase emotional awareness in children.

The creator of these whimsical toys, Nina, is an Oscar-winning CG animator. Nina developed the Kimochi line shortly after hearing of the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. She was struck by the events and was shaken by how such a horrific event could happen.

The toys were designed to improve the child-parent connection and to give children the skills to fully express their emotions using words instead of destructive behavior. Child communication expert and author of the Feeling Guide explains the purpose of Kimochis, “Getting back to the basics by playing and communicating with Kimochis is a simple, yet powerful way to teach children how to be aware of feelings, choose how to communicate in Ki-motional moments, and redo mistakes—this is The Kimochi Way.”

Meet Kimochi Cloud, Bug and Huggtopus!

Characters in the collection include; Kimochi Cloud, Kimochi Bug, and Kimochi Huggtopus. A new character named Cat will be added to the collection in September 2009. Each character has its own personality complete with 3 feeling pillows.

Cloud is moody and unpredictable frequently changing from happy to sad with only a turn of his head. He comes complete with happy, sad, and mad feelings.
Bug dislikes change and while he is thoughtful and cautious he has big dreams to one day fly. Bug notably plays the mandolin. He experiences feelings of happy, brave, and left out.
Huggtopus has a bubbly personality and can sometimes overwhelm friends with her excitement! She is complete with happy, silly, and frustrated feelings.

Individual packs of 6 “mixed feelings” include; jealous, loved, grateful, scared, shy, sorry, sleepy, surprised, and guilty among others.

The characters wholesale for $12.50 each while the separate feeling pillow packs wholesale for $6.00 each. These playful and whimsical characters are one of a kind! More product and wholesale information can be found at www.kimochis.com