Recently I asked my son, a first-grader, about a self-regulation program they use everyday in class:

Me: Can you tell me about your daily routine about your moods?

Coen: Well, everyday, we get popsicle sticks that each have our name on them, and then you put it into the green, blue, red, or yellow to represent what colour you are. Everybody does it.

Me: What do the colours mean?

Coen: Red is mad and angry. Blue is sad, bored, and tired. Green is happy and calm. Yellow is excited, worried, frustrated.

Me: What about the number system?

Coen: In a circle, we do the thing called “temperature check” where 5 is happy is, 4 is sleepy and happy, 3 is sleepy, 2 is you’re pretty much sad, and 1 is ,l ike, basically you don’t like your life right now.

Me: Do you ever pretend that you’re an emotion that you’re not?

Coen: No. But sometimes people that aren’t here, I put them into the red zone. (laughs) I like to put people in different zones for a change.

Me: How do you know what colour you are?

Coen: You just think about your emotions!

Schools are already helping young students to develop social-emotional skills, and this "temperature check" is only one of the ways they can allow children to better reflect on their own emotions and the relationship between their emotions and how they can best collaborate and learn with their peers.

This got our team thinking -- What if we could build on this movement? What if we could design technology that facilitated this growth? What if all children could authentically engage in their own social-emotional well being?

That is where Recon was created.