Emotion Charades:
Have children take turns acting out an emotion and have the other children guess what the emotion is. You could allow the children to choose the emotion themselves based on what you have learned, you could whisper the emotion they are to act out to them, or have them draw an emotion face out of a basket. My children (ages 2 & 4) both really enjoyed playing this game and had a lot of fun acting out the different emotions we had been discussing.
Drawing Faces:
My girls both love to draw, so giving them blank pieces of paper and allowing them to practice drawing faces was great for them. I told them the emotion I wanted them to try to draw and they would try to recreate it on their paper. This was also great practice for them on their shapes, as we discussed circles, crescents, ovals, arches, and many others.
You can also have your children create different faces that portray an array of emotions using a variety of materials you already have. This is a great opportunity to use different pasta shapes glued in place to create a face. You could also use Play-Doh to recreate different emotion faces. Beads, pom-pom, and other craft supplies can also be used to enhance your drawings.
Mirror Play:
Another fun activity we did that my girls loved was playing with mirrors. I brought out two mirrors and allowed each of them to play with one. I told them which faces to try to recreate and they looked in the mirror as they tried their best to make that face. There were lots of laughs with this game and we all had a great playing together. You could also combine this with drawing faces, allowing the children draw the face that they are making.
Inside Out Emotions Mix-Up Game:
I found this great game on Inspiration Made Simple and it was a lot of fun to play with my girls. They loved making different faces from the Inside Out movie based pieces and really enjoyed the aspect of rolling the dice to determine the pieces they would get to use. The game is available to download for free here.
Emotion Robot:
Lemon Lime Adventures has some great resources for your emotions unit. Their website includes a free download of this paper robot that has many different faces that you can change to show different emotions. Both of my girls had a lot of fun making these robots, coloring them, and then playing with them. Besides learning about emotions, children also get to practice cutting, gluing, folding, and coloring. This project is available to download for free here.
Spinning Make A Face:
While we did not get a chance to try this Make A Face project from Mr. Printables, it looked like a lot of fun. The different facial features spin on brads allowing the child to create all sorts of different faces and name the different emotions portrayed. You can download this project for free here.
Book Recommendations related to Emotions/Feelings:
If you are looking for some great books to read during your emotions unit, I would recommend these books.
