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Children’s social and emotional well-being sets the foundation for their ability to successfully navigate life as they grow. Children have a strong need to be heard and have their feelings understood.
As such, helping children to identify their feelings and giving children tools to talk about their emotions is of crucial importance.
In this post I am sharing several feelings activities you can do with your children to help them learn more about feelings.
These activities coincided with work my husband and I have done over the years to get our children to use “I statements” when they are feeling sad/upset/angry with each other. (For example, “I felt sad when you stepped on my doll” or “I felt angry when you didn’t include me in the game.”)
As a parent, it is tiresome to hear your children screaming at each other when one annoys the other. So my husband and I have worked hard over the years to give our children practical tools and words to use when they are feeling big emotions.
I hope these ideas below will be a positive springboard to more productive conversations about feelings in your home or classroom as well.
Reading about feelings
As part of our learning we read books about feelings. I’ve got a post sharing 45+ books about all sorts of different feelings where you will be sure to find a few books you can use.
Feelings Sort
For our feelings sort activity, I decided to focus on five primary feelings: happy, sad, angry, surprised, and scared.
Toward that end, I found and printed pictures from the internet representing each of those emotions.
I started the activity by presenting an exemplar of each emotion to the kids so we could talk about what people’s faces look like when they feel a particular emotion. We noticed, for example, that scared and surprised faces both have similar wide eyes but their mouths make different shapes.
Then the kids took all the pictures and sorted them into separate piles for each emotion.
The kids did a great job of sorting the feelings into piles, only getting confused by a few of the pictures.
At the end, we had five piles representing each of the feelings.
Update: I have now created an Emotions Printables Pack that is a fabulous tool to continue working on emotions and feelings with your young children. This pack includes plenty of activities to identify and match emotions.
Feelings charades
After sorting the feelings pictures, we then played feelings charades. The kids took turns drawing a feeling card and then acting out that feeling. They especially enjoyed acting out surprised and shy. My daughter, in particular, thought that surprised was a very fun emotion to act out. For weeks after, every time she heard anyone say the word “surprised,” she would make a very dramatic surprised face. 🙂
We did not use these, but I imagine the Todd Parr Feelings Flash Cards
And of course, there are resources in my Emotions Printables Pack that could be used for this as well.
Feelings stress balls
We also decided to make feelings stress balls. I started with four balloons and some homemade play dough.
The kids helped roll the play dough into thin snakes to make it easier to get the play dough into the balloons. (Although later we found it was easier to get small balls rather than thin snakes into the balloons.)
Once our play dough was rolled in to thin snakes, I held open the balloons while the kids inserted the play dough inside.
It was hard work to keep the balloons stretched open while my kids shoved the play dough in! After making two, my arms were shaking and I decided we would take a different approach to making the rest. (I also rationalized this by deciding that comparing the sensation of a feelings stress ball made from play dough with one made from rice would be a worthwhile endeavor as well. :-))
So I gathered two more balloons, some uncooked rice, and a funnel.
We inserted the funnel into the top of the balloon.
As I held the funnel, the kids poured rice in to their balloons. I found it worked best for the kids to pour and then for me to take out the funnel and blow a bit of air in to the balloon to get the rice to move down, then re-insert the funnel to pour more in.
When the balloons were full, we drew faces on them using a Sharpie marker to represent the emotions of happy, angry, surprised, and sad.
The kids had so much fun playing with their feelings stress balls.
Emotions Printables
I have created an Emotions Printables Pack with more than 120 activities related to children’s emotions.
This pack is designed for children in preschool and kindergarten, and it features an inclusive cast of racially and ethnically diverse children.
The pack includes:
- Activities to Identify Emotions
- Activities to Match Emotions
- Emotion Sorting Activities
- “I Feel” Creativity Mats
- Emotion Puzzles
- Emotion I Spy
- Emotion Cutting Practice
- Emotion Graphing
- “I Feel” Sentences
Want a copy of my Emotions Printables Pack?
Get this product by clicking the button below.
More Social Emotional Resources
More social and emotional posts from Gift of Curiosity:
This is so great. I have been reading a book that really emphasizes the importance of teaching kids to identify their emotions. These are great tools to help do that! Jodi @ http://www.meaningfulmama.com
I agree that helping kids identify and name their emotions is so important. I was so proud when XGirl was trying to take off her shirt the other day and was having difficulty, then turned to me and said “I’m frustrated!” 🙂
Hi Katie,
I love your new Emotions Bundle…do you have something that is simple and geared toward 2-3 year olds? In our playgroups, we are working on identifying emotions and learning ways to help calm our bodies…
some of the handouts that I can see in your bundle may work for the little kiddos, but thought I’d see if you have a bundle that I missed for the little ones..
Thanks,
Christy
Hi Christy, I do not, at this time, have a bundle specifically geared toward 2-3 year olds although I’m sure many of the activities in my Emotions Bundle would work well for that age group.
This is such a great idea! My 2yr old has been having such a hard time expressing her self lately and gets so upset this is a great activity to help her learn about emotions and feelings. Thanks so much for sharing on We Made That.
That is such a cool activity about emotions. I have never seen a stress ball made with play dough, but the texture would be really fun for my kids to compare. Thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library!
I really like the ways you connected the kiddos to their feelings using books, pictures, their own bodies, and a sensory activity. I’m going to Pin this (if that’s ok). Thanks so much for sharing this! 🙂
I’m so glad you liked what we did, and yes, it is more than okay to pin it. 🙂
I love your idea for the balloon faces! Fabulous! Thank you for sharing with us at Share It Saturday.
Fantastic ideas here. I think it is so important that we help children understand feelings and emotions and how to deal with them in healthy ways. It’s not the feelings/emotions that are negative, just sometimes the way we deal with them. Well done with your article.
just fantastic. this week i am supposed to do feeling with my kids in school. this is something great and i love it. thanks a ton!
I bet they came up with a lot of things to do with the stress balls. They look like lots of fun.
Great ideas! We’ve been working on identifying emotions around here as well…my little guy knows “hapeeeeee hapeeeee” but I’m trying to get him to say “I’m mad!” instead of throwing (or hitting ;-()…so far when I ask him if he is mad he always responds “NO!!” and I respond along the lines of “you look mad to me, you’re yelling or throwing…it’s ok to be mad but it’s not ok to throw things”….I think we need some more books on the subject….
Thanks for sharing at Sharing Saturday!
Ah yes, it is a work in progress to get kids to identify their emotions, isn’t it? 🙂
The stress balls are a really great idea. I have used them before with my pre-k and kindergarten children. I found a really easy way to make the playdough balloons was to just make the homemade playdough in the balloons. Put water in the balloon, then add some flour and salt. It worked well and the kids loved it. we also made them with rice and with beans. all three were a lot of fun to play with!
Great tip about making the playdough IN the balloons. That would have made this activity a lot easier!
Flour works really well to when added to the balloon.
Ooh, never thought to try flour! Thanks for the tip!
Awesome idea! Is important to give direction on how to deal with emotions. I love the feelings book!!
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much for these activities, we are working on feelings with my ds1 who is four so these will be perfect 🙂
I used sand. Then I used flour. I then mixed cornmeal with flour. This made a very nice consistency in the balloon.
Those fillers sound lovely!
I think this is one of the most important thing to teach your children. How to express themselves! Because these emotions are not bad the way they are expressed is troublesome. My daughter loves to play this kind of “recognise the emotion” game with me. I think I should made these stress balls to her. Good idea!