FEELINGS ART

YARN FACES

• Give your children a paper plate, some glue, small pieces of yarn, and some felt scraps.
• Have the children turn the plates into faces.
• Show children examples of different yarn mouth shapes to indicate different feelings.

 
FELT PUMPKIN FACES

• Set up a felt board for your children to use.
• Set out some felt facial features, plus a large orange felt pumpkin shape.
• Encourage your children to make different pumpkin faces using the felt facial features.
• Discuss with each child his pumpkin face and how his pumpkin is feeling.
• Be sure to include lots of different felt mouth shapes, to indicate different feelings.

FEELINGS PICTURES

• After discussing feelings, ask your children to make a happy picture.
• Another day ask them to draw sad pictures.
• Use the pictures to create a Feelings Book or bulletin board.

FEELINGS GAMES

MIRROR, MIRROR

• Sit with your child in front of a mirror.
• Call out a specific kind of feeling; such as, “sad”.
• Then both of you make a “sad” face in the mirror.

Variation:  Play another game where only one of you makes up an emotion and makes a face in the mirror.  The other player, then tries to guess what emotion was expressed.

 
MOVE WITH FEELINGS
Incorporate feelings into movement time.

• Tell your children to run around your room or yard feeling happy,
• Then ask them to walk around feeling sad.
• Or stomp around feeling angry.
• Let your children help you decide the feelings and the movements to use to help express them.
   

FEELINGS MATCHING GAME
Make a “Feelings” matching game for your children.

• Take 12 index cards and make a large face circle on each card.
• Then draw a happy face on two cards, a sad face on two cards, a mad face on two cards, a surprised face on two cards, and angry face on two cards and a bored face on two cards.
• Let children take turns turning over one card, then continue turning over cards until she finds a match with the original feelings card.
• Then these two cards are taken out of the game.
• The cards are then turned over and mixed again.
• The same child continues playing, until they find all of the matches.
• When all the cards have been matched, another child has a turn.

FEELINGS BOX

• Place cards of different feelings faces in a box.
• Hold up the box and let your children take turns drawing a cards out of the box.
• Then have the child pretend to be feeling like the picture on the card in a short drama.
• Let the other children try to guess how the child is feeling.
• Continue with other children and other cards.

FEELINGS LANGUAGE

FEELINGS AT STORY TIME

• Read stories to your children that have characters who express emotions.
• When you get that that part in the story, stop and ask your child how the character is feeling.
• When the story is over, go back over the story and have your child act out how the character felt during different parts of the story.

PUPPET STORIES

• When your children are playing with puppets, encourage them to tell you stories about the puppet.
• Be sure to ask how the puppet is feeling at different times during the story.

HAPPY/SAD PUPPET

• Make paper plate puppets for your children with craft stick handles.
• Draw a happy face on one side of the puppet and a sad face on the other side.
• Now describe situations and have your children hold up the happy or the sad side of their puppets.
• Examples of situations:  You got a new bike.  You lost your favorite ball.  Your stomach hurts.  You found a dollar.  Etc.

 
SOMETIMES I FEEL HAPPY
Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel sad.
Sometimes I feel curious, sometimes I feel mad.
Sometimes I feel silly, sometimes I feel surprised.
How many ways do you feel, coming from inside?
                                                                Jean Warren
Make a list with your children of all the ways we feel.

FEELINGS DISCOVERIES

Help your children discover their feelings.  Help them understand that all feelings are valid, they just have to learn how to properly express those feelings to others.
It is important  when children are young, to have many opportunities to express their feelings and emotions in a safe environment.
  

ROLE PLAY EMOTIONAL SITUATIONS
Roll play with your children to help them learn how to appropriately handle situations where he or others have strong feelings.

• Pretend you are very sad because you lost your puppy.  What would an appropriate response to be by the child if he saw you or someone else crying?
• Pretend your child received a gift he didn’t really care for.  How should he handle the situation?

FEELING SNACKS

MAKING FACES
Here are a few ways you can have children help you make face snacks.

• Spread frosting on large sugar cookies and make faces with candies and licorice strings.
• Make round cracker faces by spreading on cream cheese and using sliced olives or carrot rounds for eyes and pieces of pepper or tomato for mouths.
• Spread cream cheese on toasted English muffins and add shredded carrot for hair, olive rounds for eyes and tomato slices for happy smiles.

FEELINGS SONGS & RHYMES

FEELINGS SONGS & RHYMES – can be found at the Music Station under Anytime Songs & Rhymes.