Emotion-focused teaching in early childhood promotes children's early academic and social-emotional development and can occur through planned or informal classroom interactions. We observed video recordings of preschool teachers engaging in typical teaching practices and carrying out researcher-assigned book reading and social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons. Video cycles were coded using a measure of emotion-focused teaching, which captures teachers' modeling of, responding to, and instructing about emotions. This study examines (1) whether emotion-focused teaching will be greater during guided SEL activities (SEL lessons and book readings) compared to teaching as usual; and (2) which types of SEL activities are associated with higher levels of EFT-scripted lessons or book readings. Analyses indicate that emotion-focused teaching is greater during SEL activities but only planned SEL lessons had significantly higher scores than the non-intervention occasions. Findings are discussed with exemplar practices drawn from activity transcripts to highlight malleable practices suitable for coaching and professional development.