Feelings expression activities

10 Activities for Teaching Young Children About Emotions

Having the vocabulary to talk about emotions is an important part of healthy social-emotional development—and as all of us continue to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 era together, helping kids talk about their feelings is more important than ever.

In today’s post, we’re sharing a few simple games and activities you can use to teach young children about emotions: how to recognize and name them, how to talk about them, and how to pick up on the feelings of others. Adapted from some new and classic Brookes resources on social-emotional development, these activities are ideal for use in early childhood programs (and parents can easily adapt them for home, too!).

What’s your favorite way to get young children talking about emotions? Add your idea in the comments below!

This activity is a great starting point for teaching young children about emotions. Here’s what to do:

• Generate a list of feelings. Start with a basic feeling, such as happy or sad, and explain that this is a feeling. Give a second example, using a more complex feeling such as excited or surprised. Ask students to generate other feelings, add them to the list, and display the list for students on chart paper or with a projector.
• Identify feelings as good or not so good. Go back to the start of your feelings list, and have the students give you a thumbs-up for feelings that make people feel good on the inside and a thumbs-down for feelings that make people feel not so good on the inside.
• Conduct a follow-up discussion. Ask students if they have ever had any feelings where it was hard to decide if the feeling made them feel good or not so good on the inside. Give an example.

Create “feeling dice” using clear acrylic photo cubes—slide drawings of faces depicting different emotions on each side. (You could also use photos or cutouts from magazines instead of drawings.) In a small group, give each child a chance to roll the dice. When the dice lands, ask the child to identify the feeling and describe a time when they felt that way.

Brainstorm some common scenarios that might elicit different feelings. A few examples:

• “Your grandma picked you up after school and took you get to ice cream.”
• “Your classmate spilled paint on your drawing.”
• “Your mom yelled at you.”
• “Your brother wouldn’t let you have a turn on the swings.”

Put the scenarios in a hat and pass the hat around the circle or small group while you play music. When you stop the music, the child left holding the hat should pick out a scenario (you can help read it for the child if they can’t yet read). Then ask the child to describe how they would feel if the scenario happened to them.

Choose a book about feelings to share with students, or read a book from the following list of examples: Feelings by Aliki, The Way I Feel by Janan Cain, Feelings by Joanne Brisson Murphy, The Feelings Book by Todd Parr, and My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss. Be sure to point out all the actions or ways in which the characters behave when they’re acting on their feelings. Use the following questions to guide your class discussion about emotions:

• What was one of the feelings the character had?
• Do you think it was a good or not so good feeling?
• What did the character do when he or she was feeling that way?
• Was it an okay or not okay way of showing the feeling?
• Can you think of a time when you felt that way? What kind of face can you make to show that feeling?

 Create a spinning wheel that features different feeling faces. (Need tips on making one? This blog post shows you how to make spinners for games using items you probably have easy access to.) Give each child a chance to spin the feeling wheel. When the spinner lands on a feeling face, ask the child to identify the feeling and talk about an incident that made them feel that emotion.

Form small groups of students. Using laminated cards with illustrations of feelings on them, a large die, or a beach ball with each stripe of color preassigned to represent a feeling, have students act out the face and body clues that show the feeling they drew or rolled. Ask the other students to take turns guessing which feeling is being acted out.

Create feeling face bingo boards for your students, each with 12 squares that feature various feeling faces (you can add more squares for older children). Have children draw a feeling name from a bag and then cover the matching feeling face with the paper that was drawn from the bag. When they cover a face, they can talk about events or memories that made them feel that emotion.

Puppet play is a good activity to try one-on-one or in small groups to help children explore and express their feelings, ideas, and concerns. Many children find it easier to talk about feelings during puppet play, because it can give them some distance from scary or upsetting issues.

Encourage children to pick up a puppet and be its voice while you or another child or adult adopts the character of another puppet. You can discuss the children’s feelings indirectly and offer another point of view through your puppet. Reversing the characters so that children play another role can also promote empathy by helping kids experience how others feel.

For this activity, you’ll need old magazines and some basic art supplies: posterboard or construction paper, scissors, and glue sticks. Invite your students to cut pictures from the magazines of people expressing any kind of feeling, and instruct them to use these images to build a “feelings collage.” Hand out markers and ask students to label each picture in their collage with a feeling word; then, have them take turns explaining their collages and feeling labels to the group. Encourage your students to elaborate on the details of what they noted regarding the person’s facial expression, their body language, or the context of the photo or illustration. When the activity is over, let your students take the collages home and post them in a prominent place so they can practice identifying and labeling their own feelings.

Make 12 pairs of matching feeling faces—you can draw them or find appropriate photos or illustrations to print out. Turn over the face cards and arrange them in a grid. Ask each child to turn two cards over to try to get a match. When they find a match, they can say what the feeling is and describe a time when they felt that way. They set the match aside, and children keep going until all matches are found.

***

Try these games and activities with your students (or at home with your own children), and let us know which ones worked best for you! And for more ways to help promote healthy social-emotional development in young children, check out the books we adapted this week’s post from:

Activity 1: Adapted from Merrell’s Strong Start—Grades K–2, by Sara A. Whitcomb, Ph.D., & Danielle M. Parisi Damico, Ph.D.

Activities 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10: Adapted from Unpacking the Pyramid Model, edited by Mary Louise Hemmeter, Ph.D., Michaelene M. Ostrosky, Ph.D., & Lise Fox, Ph.D.

Activity 8: Adapted from Pathways to Competence, Second Edition, by Sarah Landy, Ph.D.

Activities 4, 6, and 9: Adapted from Merrell’s Strong Start—Pre-K, by Sara A. Whitcomb, Ph.D., & Danielle M. Parisi Damico, Ph.D.

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Feelings Activities

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Feelings Activities

When children and young people can recognise and talk about different feelings it can help them have a better understanding of how to deal with them. These activities will help you talk about feelings and think together about how to cope with difficult emotions in a positive way.

A Story About Emotions 

The Colour Monster

Emotion & Feelings Wheel Activity

A visual aid to help understand our emotions.

Anxiety Thermometer

A great tool to help us to recognise what feelings we might be experiencing.

Sentence Starters 

Useful prompts for children who are struggling to express the way they feel.

Emotional Check-In Activity

This resource supports children & young people to express their feelings and also identify why they are feeling a particular way.

Relax Like a Cat!

A relaxation technique for children.

Managing Emotions

These tools are designed to help children understand and manage their emotions and feelings, and stay calm and in control in the classroom.

Glitter Jar

A glitter jar is something your child can make to help them feel calmer and less confused about their feelings.

The STOPP Technique

This video explains how to create a space between a situation occurring and our reaction to it.

The Opposite Actions Technique

This video explains what your child can do to reduce the intensity of negative emotions.

Make Your Own Worry Box

The worry box helps children put their worries in a special place so they don't have to think about them all at once or all the time.

Colour Monster Activity

An activity to help your child think about how they are feeling today.

The Stress Bucket

Try this activity with your child or young person if they are looking or feeling stressed, or of you know they have tests or exams coming up. 

Also in this section...

• Anger Activities
• Anti-Bullying Activities
• Feelings Activities
• Low Mood Activities
• Mindfulness Activities
• Self-Care Activities
• Self-Confidence & Self Esteem Activities
• Resilience Activities
• Worries & Anxiety Activities
• Children & Young Peoples Emotional Health
• Emotional Health

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Expression of feelings, manifestation of emotional states

Feelings often want to be expressed, emotions and emotional states are often simply torn from the soul. Why, why? As for the goals or main functions of expressing emotions and feelings, there are three of these functions:

• Communication, communication, transmission of certain messages about oneself and one's emotional state. Sometimes it is important that people, especially those close to you, understand you. This helps better interaction and good relations. In this case, the expresser of feelings, as a communicator, requires adequate wording of the message about his feelings plus emotional expressiveness. See →
• Impact on others or partner. The cry of a child is not just current information for regular consideration, it is a command for an immediate response. Emotions don't just convey messages, emotions infect and energize, demand and inspire, attract and repel. See →
• Emotional response, release from internal tension. People often express their feelings because they overwhelm and create tension. In the process of emotional response, expressing feelings, inner relief is achieved. The internal task here is emotional response, although in reality the matter is more often limited to an unconstructive outburst of emotions.

How to deal with this? - Very different, because there are no emotions and feelings in general, everything is very specific. Some emotional manifestations please everyone and are good for health, other affective outbursts are harmful to health, business, and relationships. Here we are not talking about the fact that some emotions are bad in themselves, rather, you need to be attentive to the specific form, in what context and for what purpose this or that feeling is expressed.

If we try to distinguish more or less pure forms of a variety of expression of feelings, then the main forms can be distinguished:

• Outburst of emotion - free, without obstacles and indiscriminately, release of emotional tension in speech, expression and actions. These are both cries of joy and an explosion of hatred: everything that has come from within spills out here.
• You-statement - speaking about the Other from the position of I. Evaluating the Other or splashing out feelings about the Other, as I see it: from “You are magnificent” to “You are a dumbass!”. Sometimes an energetic You-statement turns out to be a way to splash out emotions.
• I-statement - a statement when I speak about my state and my feelings in the first person, from the first (or zero) position of perception. “I’m afraid”, “I’m ready to explode when nothing comes out of me!”.
• I-message - an appeal in which a person speaks to another about his state, feelings and desires without accusations and pressure. I-messages, like I-statements, can be part of emotional venting.

How easy is it to see and distinguish in life? - Difficult. People rarely think about why and how they express their feelings and manifest their emotional states: most often this happens impulsively, without thought, often being only automatism and a product of habit. As a result, the expression of feelings is usually a salad in which everything is mixed: both emotional response, and communication, and this or that method of influence. However, the higher the psychological culture and personal development of a person, the more awareness and control a person approaches the expression of his own emotions and feelings, the more the expression of emotions has a specific purpose and addressee.

It seems that for a reasonable person, the rule can be a guideline: "Any emotion must be targeted and expedient."

Catharsis: Reducing Violent Motivations Through Aggressive Outbursts

Leonard Berkowitz, in his book Aggression: Causes, Consequences, and Control, critically analyzes the traditional concepts of "feeling" as a way to release negative emotions, see →

Expression of emotions and feelings

03/30/2013

Experiences of emotional states - joy, love, friendship, sympathy, favor or pain, grief, fear, hatred, contempt, disgust, etc. are always accompanied by appropriate external or internal expressions.

It is enough to get emotionally excited, it immediately covers the whole organism. External expressions of emotions and feelings are manifested in movements, postures, motor and vocal facial expressions, intonations of speech, eye movements, etc. The internal or visceral manifestation of experiences is clearly manifested in the heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, changes in the endocrine glands, digestive and excretory organs.

These inner experiences are asthenic or sthenic , that is, they manifest themselves through suppression or excitation.

External or expressive expression of emotions and feelings is noticeable even in infants. But they are still little differentiated. With experience, especially with the development of speech by a child, the expressive expression of emotions and feelings acquires various shades. Their wealth is so great that there are about 5000-6000 words in the language, which mainly convey experiences.

With the experience and development of speech, the child gradually masters expressive expressions, to some extent delays them, but this does not mean that emotion is inhibited by this. P. K. Anokhin believes that in such cases only certain peripheral components of emotions are inhibited - movements, facial expressions, the emotion itself, once it has arisen, inevitably spreads to other, mainly visceral components.

However, the formation of endurance in children has a positive effect on their life and relationships in the team.

With the mastery of expressive ways of expressing emotions and feelings, the ability to perceive and understand various forms and shades of expression of experiences, the ability to identify them are formed.

Along with this, the ability to use expressive ways of expressing feelings in order to influence others develops. This ability is necessary for an artist, and especially for a teacher, who, having recognized, thanks to observation, internal states and experiences, can lead them, influence others with an educational purpose with his own expressively expressed feelings.

Depending on the circumstances and condition of a person, his preparedness for experiences, emotions and feelings can be expressed in different ways. A feeling of fear, for example, can cause an asthenic reaction - stiffness, shock, or a sthenic reaction. Grief can cause apathy, inaction, confusion, or appropriate vigorous action.

Forms and intensity of revealing emotions and feelings largely depend on upbringing, the level of human culture, traditions and customs. This is especially reflected in their expression in external ways - facial expressions, movements, gestures. Their internal expression (heartbeat, respiration, action of the endocrine system) occurs relatively independently of social factors.

Key words: Emotions, Feelings

Source: Maksimenko S.D., General psychology

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