When a young child has a strong emotion, it can be hard for them to know how to handle it. Giving them a name for those strong emotions can be a game-changer. Check out these teaching feelings games to make the learning process of this important social skill fun and engaging.
Match It Teaching Feelings Similar Games
Matching a situation to a specific emotion can be tricky.
One of my favorite ways to do this is to give a situation to the student and talk about how the person might feel. This leads to great conversation as to why they might feel that way.
Second, I have them show me with their body how the person might act or look in that situation. We speak about different ways eyes and eyebrows look and different mouth positions.
Children with a more advanced understanding of emotions might be ready to go beyond the face. Talk about how the rest of the body might be looking. What might the shoulders or arms be doing? How would be body be positioned towards others? This is a great segway into non-verbal communication too!
Here’s an example: Andy’s little brother took away the toy he was playing with. The students could match that Andy is feeling sad or mad (either could be correct).
Sad because the toy he was playing with is gone.
Mad because his brother took away his toy.
After that, the student could act out the way Andy was feeling (sad – mouth turned down, eyebrows up, etc. or mad – scrunched face, mouth together tight, armed crossed, etc.)
Students have so much fun acting out the different situations that they often forget they are learning this important social/emotional concept.
More Facial Feature Games for Teaching Feelings
A great game to work on identifying emotions is matching similar faces up.
An easy way to do this is to pull out some old magazines. If you can find magazines that also have many children’s faces in them, that is a plus. Identifying emotions in a face that looks similar to theirs is a great starting point.
Simply have students select (or teacher assign) a picture of a face. Have the student find similar faces in other pictures. Talk about what is the same and what emotion the person could be feeling. To take it a step farther, have the student make the same feeling features on their own face (using a mirror is great!).
Take this game even one step further: assign students a certain feeling. Next, have them find a picture that matches that feeling. Have students explain how they know.
Another more advanced game would be where the child is assigned an emotion and has to guess that emotion. Other students could answer ‘yes/no’ questions to help the guesser figure it out.
I love playing this type of game with my Headbanz game set. Take a look at this engaging teaching feelings game here. You’ll find 3 different sets of faces: kids, generic smiley, and dog faces. There is also a question card included for students who might not be sure what to ask.
With all these games, work on the student describing the different facial features that make up a certain emotion. For example, ‘sad’ could be a downward turned mouth and eyebrows and possibly watery eyes.
Teaching Feelings Game Android or Apple Use for Online Fun
Are you all about digital learning?
Maybe you are teaching long distances.
Or maybe your students are super motivated by using a table.
Or just maybe you are a super smart teacher who has plenty of alternative activities planned just in case that student behavior rears its ugly head and you need some independent work for students while you are working on that situation.
Whatever the reason is, Boom Cards are a wonderful educational tool to use. If you haven’t heard of Boom Cards yet, they are basically self-checking, digital task cards. (You can check out this post all about what Boom Cards are and how to use them here.)
Boom Cards have made such a great addition to my classroom. It took me a bit to figure out how to incorporate them into my social skills learning though.
I ended up figuring out they were great for modeling feelings on all different sorts of faces. Students have loved seeing emotions on animals and silly objects. They created a great way for me to take things my students love into a game-like format to help with the learning process.
There are many different decks for teaching about emotions on the Boom Learning site. Check these out for working on identifying feelings. Students learn what a few different feelings are on a dog’s face and then find the asked about emotion. And after the student completes the deck, you get a report on how they did (hello data tracking!). In addition, each task card also has audio support so reading ability doesn’t get in the way of learning this important social/emotional skill. Find these identifying emotions activity digital task cards here.
Free Teaching Feelings Games
Or if you are looking for a free deck on identifying primary emotions, check this one out. It features cute little party hats while focusing on the basic emotions of sad, mad, and happy. You can get this great free deck of boom cards here. You’ll find 3 cards that identify the different facial features of each emotion. On the following cards, students select the party hat that shows the asked about emotion (with audio support again included).
More on Teaching Emotions
For more ways to work on teaching emotions, check out this post. Here you’ll find 3 different ways to teach about emotions including books, movie clips, and games.
Check out this post for more great ideas on exploring emotions through activities with sign language.
Teaching feelings is great as part of a behavior intervention plan. If you are looking for a simple step-by-step guide to writing an amazing behavior plan, tell me where to send this free functional behavior plan process to:
Check out these teaching feelings games to make the SEL learning process of matching an emotion with a name fun and engaging.
Teaching feelings is important. Doing it with these fun teaching feelings games turns this subject into a fun activity during your next social skills group.
Happy Teaching!
