Do your little ones need help understanding feelings and emotions? When my daughter was very young it was clear that she had sensory issues and self control was definitely an issue. We often said “use your words” to try and get her to communicate how she was feeling, but sometimes she couldn’t. Using printables and activities on feelings and emotions helped her to express her feelings more accurately.
Helping Children Express Feelings and Emotions
If your child has difficulty expressing emotions, you may be wondering how to get them to talk about feelings. Teaching your child how to to identify and express emotions can be difficult, especially if you are not a very sensitive person. Free emotions downloads might prove to be super helpful for you. You can use a feelings chart for kids or an emotions worksheet to help teach them how to express themselves.
When I was a child I grew up in an abusive and severely dysfunctional home. This has caused me to handle my feelings quite a bit differently than many people. I learned how to put up walls and hide how I felt. Tragically, this caused me heartache when my youngest daughter was struggling with her feelings and didn’t know how to express them.
Ways to Express Feelings
We tried many different ways to get our daughter to express how she was feeling, we used feelings pictures, an emotion chart for kids, a fun feelings activity, but what I found most helpful when she couldn’t express herself adequately were using emotion flashcards. We have included some free emotions flashcards in our Feelings and Emotions Activity Pack below.
Ideas for Expressing Emotions
- You can use a teaching feeling game, printable emotion cards, or a feelings game printable to help your young ones understand how and why they are feeling a certain way.
- Use emotion cards pdf files to print and use to help identify feelings.
- A feelings worksheet can be super helpful to use to work though feelings as you ask your child questions and work through visuals.
- Feeling faces printables (like the freebie we have below) can help non-verbal children explain how they feel.
- Use feelings flashcards that show emotions (great for visual learners).
- Print and use our emotions chart with faces that can help keep track of bad days. A feeling chart for kids can help you reflect on what may have contributed to certain emotions.
- You can have lots of fun playing and reading books while learning about how to handle your feelings and emotions.
Learning how to help children work through feelings and emotions can radically change your home.
How do you use flashcards for feelings?
Using flashcards for feelings and emotions can help toddlers or even older children tell us how they are feeling. Even a non-verbal child can often look at an angry face and tell it’s angry. If we lay out several flashcards with emotional faces on them, we can help them point to how they are feeling.
Feeling Flashcards
Feelings and Emotions flashcards can also be used as a game. You can get creative and make up stories that reflect the emotions and feelings of the face on the flashcard.
Feelings Journal Printables:
Keeping track of your child’s feelings and emotions using a feelings journal can be helpful when you are trying to determine sensory triggers, or other emotional responses that are out of the ordinary.
Emotions Journal
Logging everything in the emotions journal will help you spot patterns. Even things such as the weather, sleep the night prior, meals, and activities. Journaling about feelings can help you become aware of situations that you might need to consider avoiding.
Social Emotional Learning Skills
Social Emotional Learning Journal – These journal prompts focus on self-awareness and help you teach social emotional learning skills.
Coping Strategies Notebook – This free emotions template can help you create a feelings and emotions binder that you can use to log situations and detail how certain coping strategies hurt or helped.
Printable Gratitude Journal Templates – It’s a great idea to also keep a list/log of all the things your child is grateful for so you can reference it when troubles arise.
Expressing Big Feelings
Whether you have younger children or older kids, they are likely to have big feelings (most of us do!). It can be difficult for children to express different emotions, and that’s where printable feelings charts can be a powerful tool.
Learn and Teach Emotion Words
If you have a child who is prone to throwing a temper tantrum, they may need help understanding their own emotions. You can keep an emotional vocabulary handy, and teach them emotion words to use to express their own feelings.
Printable Facial Expressions
You can also use a feelings book or journal that has feelings faces if you have a non-verbal child. The best way to help them express their various emotions is to allow them to show you the face that best explains how they are feeling.
Games that Teaching Feelings and Emotions:
You can use a free printable feelings board game to help your child practice mastering his feelings. There are also some great board games that you can invest in that your whole family can play.
Feelings Game Printable
Games are a fun and non-threatening way to get children to communicate how they are feeling without a lot of pressure. Children who are struggling to express themselves might be able to act out a situation that reflects how they are feeling.
Discover some new coping strategies to handle difficult emotions.
- My Feelings Game – Explore more than 200 scenarios that will help your child talk about his feelings. Discover strategies to help children cope with emotions in a socially acceptable way.
- Positive Traits Game – This coping skills game is perfect for group or solo play. It includes trait pictures and discussion cards with 10 different ways to play.
- Emotional Rollercoaster – This emotions board game looks like a fun way to help work through difficult emotions, such as anger management.
Using Printables to Help Kids Share Feelings
When my daughter struggled with sensory processing, I never thought to browse google for an emotions worksheet that would help her express the way she was feeling. Learning how to help kids with emotions can be difficult. We created our own pages using hand-drawn emoji faces before we finally just created an emotions worksheet, which grew into a whole activity pack, complete with feelings pictures instead of hand-drawn ones. She enjoyed this much more.
Resources for Kids to Express Their Feelings
There are so many free resources on emotions that can be helpful for young children who struggle to express their feelings and communicate what they are feeling.
Free Emotions Downloads
We have created several free printables on feelings and emotions along with activities that can help your kids communicate their feelings, and teach your child to identify and express emotions and learn how to cope when they feel overwhelmed. These free feelings printables can be of great help to you.
Overwhelming Emotions
Sometimes emotions can be really overwhelming for little ones to understand, and sometimes you can have kids that are overly emotional and need help getting themselves in check. That’s where using fun printables and games come in handy. Printable emotion cards for adults can even come in handy when you are dealing with special needs.
Free Feelings and Emotions Printables:
We have done the legwork of searching for printable emotions worksheets, face emotion cards, a feelings chart for kids, and feelings games that you can use to teach coping skills. Be sure to grab our free resources as well; you’ll find them below.
Feelings and Emotions Flash Cards:
Emotion Word Cards – These emotion picture word cards are great for non-verbal children who know how to read.
Printable Managing Emotions
Printable Emotion Flashcards – I like the LEGO mini figure faces options for these emotions flashcards. Using free printable emotion faces is great, especially for non-verbal children.
Emotions Printable Cards
Montessori Emotion Monster Cards – These free printable emotions cards are cute. Your kids struggling with anger, jealousy, or frustration? These cards can help them tell you how they feel.
Scripture Memory CardsScripture Memory Cards on Emotions – Once I was stuck on a bridge (my biggest fear!) with my little girl, who was about 4 years old at the time. I was white-knuckling it while feeling lightheaded and quite a bit panicked. From her car seat she just kept saying “The Lord is my Helper, I’ll not be afraid” until I started reciting it with her. It helped me so very much and was my inspiration in creating these free Feelings and Emotions Scripture Memory Cards.
You can print this Free Scripture Memory Cards on Emotions printable pack to use with your family. There are four sections to it, so be sure to only print the pages you need. You’ll find:
These cards include Scripture verses for when your children are feeling:
This printable pack is available for free in our subscriber library. You can sign up for access at the bottom of this post. |
Feelings and Emotions Task Cards:
Task cards can be helpful as a springboard for conversation. When kids struggle to communicate what they are feeling, they may act out and behave in ways that you don’t allow, such as yelling, stomping feet, talking back, or maybe even hiding in a corner.
Consider using some emotions task cards as scenarios to get your kids to open up about how they feel.
Social Problem-Solving Task Cards – I love these conversational task cards that can help you work with your child on what to say and how to act with different situations.
Growth Mindset Task Cards – This free task cards pack is targeted for special needs children in grades 4-7. The scenario questions can help your child process different responses.
Social Problem Solving Task Cards – Grab this pack of free task cards that include social scenarios and situations that children can talk about and identify how they would solve each situation.
Emotions Clip Cards:
Using clip cards is a great way for non-verbal children to show you how they feel.
Printable Clip Cards for Learning Weather and Emotions – These emotions clip cards are cure and the weather theme would be fun to use when you are doing science lessons focused on teaching your children about weather.
Animal Emotions Clip Cards – Themed clip cards using the faces of animals. Perfect for your animal-loving child!
Feelings and Emotions Posters and Charts:
Using posters and charts is a good way to track progress of handling tough situations. Children can often be encouraged when they see how far they’ve come.
Don’t Give Up! An Object Lesson for Kids Who Feel Down – Change your child’s attitude from defeated to encouraged with this activity that changes experiences from negative to positive.
The Power of Yet Posters – Use these encouraging posters to help your struggling child realize that practice makes things easier.
Feelings Chart for Kids
Character Emotions Chart – If you like tracking progress, then this emotions chart of faces is a great visual tracker. You could laminate it and stick it in your homeschool binder.
Free Feelings and Emotions Activity PackTeaching your child about their feelings and emotions just got easier! This feelings and emotions activity pack comes with all you need to easily introduce your child to understanding how they feel as well as communicating about it. Feelings Poster PrintableYou’ll have access to a printable “Words for My Feelings” poster that will teach your child different words they can use to share how they are feeling. The free printable emotion faces allow your child to be creative because they can draw the facial expressions on the blank faces.
Daily Feelings Chart for KidsThere is also a feelings check-in printable that can help you (and your child) keep track of how they are feeling on a daily basis. The information on this page can help you identify any mood swings or if certain days, times, and/or activities trigger certain feelings and emotions. Feeling Faces PrintableHelp your child get practice learning along the way with the feeling faces printable. They’ll be able to draw the facial expressions according to the feeling and/or emotion listed beneath the face. Along with cut and paste and drawing activities, your children will be able to learn how to write the words to different feelings and emotions. These pages also double as coloring pages too! This printable pack is available for free in our subscriber library. You can sign up for access at the bottom of this post. |
Unit Studies on Feelings and Emotions:
Older students may enjoy using unit studies instead of cute printable feelings worksheets that may feel too childish for them. Check out these unit studies to help kids express emotions.
Learning About Emotions and Feelings – This free unit study on facial expressions can help your child identify facial expressions. You can even have fun and practice mimicking the facial expressions.
Inside Out Study Guide for Teens: Understanding Emotions – This fun study guide for “Inside Out” (Disney/Pixar) is a great handy guide for teens.
Don’t Be An Angry Bird free printables for an anger management/feelings unit study from The Home Teacher. The goal of this book is to help your child understand their anger and learn some appropriate strategies to deal with it.
More Free Printables on Feelings:
Exploring Emotions with Lego Faces from Homeschool Encouragement – these are for ages K-2 and are great to use with Lego mini figures with different facial expressions as part of a unit study on feelings.
Conversation Skills Lessons – Free social skills lessons for older students that will help them develop better conversational skills.
Self Expression Through Writing & Art- Free Self Esteem Worksheets – Children can often draw pictures of what they are feeling and this fun self expression printable helps them thing through their feelings and get it all put on paper.
Great articles on helping children understand their emotions:
- Bible Verses for Guiding Kids Through Life Situations
- Bible Verses to Help With Children’s Insecurities
- Targeting Social Skills in Your Homeschool
Free Printable PDF Feelings ChartWe created a free pdf that you can download and use over and over again. It will help you track your child’s feelings and emotions. Keep a Journal of Feelings and EmotionsIf you like to track how your child’s feelings change with the wind, you can use our free feelings and emotions tracker. There are ways to help your children gain self-control and to become aware of their triggers. The My Feelings and Emotions Tracker includes an undated feelings and emotions “calendar” with response sheets and coloring pages.
What can we do with children to help them understand their feelings and emotions?There are ways to help your children gain self-control and to become aware of their triggers. Once we learned what our daughter’s triggers were, we were better equipped to help her work through her feelings and emotions in a more rational way.
The My Feelings and Emotions Tracker includes an undated feelings and emotions “calendar” with response sheets and coloring pages. You can download and use an emotions worksheet right away. This activity pack is available for free in our subscriber library. Not yet a subscriber? No worries – sign up below! Sign up for access to our Subscriber LibraryDownload dozens of free homeschool resources with more added frequently.
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Sarah is a wife, daughter of the King and Mama to 4 children (one who is a homeschool graduate)! She is a an eclectic, Charlotte Mason style homeschooler that has been homeschooling for over 16 years now. She is still trying to find the balance between work and keeping a home and says she can only do it by the Grace of God, and Coffee!
