The Emotions Chart is designed to help young people to recognize and name their emotions which is an important step in the healing process. These charts can play a key role in helping kids with the See It! Say It! and Feel It! components of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique. You can download the chart by clicking here or on the image above.

What Are These Emotion Charts?

These charts are based on the characters and emotions included in our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards and the forthcoming book 150 Emotions Every Child Should Know, By Age. Each page includes 30 different emotions, and are designed to introduce new emotions as the child grows older.

• Chart #1 (pictured above) includes 30 basic emotions every child should know by age 8.
• Chart #2 adds an additional 30 emotions children should know by age 10.
• Chart #3 adds an additional 30 emotions children should know by age 12.
• Chart #4 adds an additional 30 emotions teens should know by age 14.
• Chart #5 adds an additional 30 emotions teens should know by age 18.

The movie Inside Out has been great for those of us working to help kids better understand and deal with their emotions. In addition to being a great movie, it has sparked a litany of crafts and games to go along with it. These crafts and activities can help kids to better understand the emotions they are feeling. The Inside Out Mood Board is one of those activities and is a fun way for kids who like the movie to track their emotions.

Supplies Needed for an Inside Out Mood Board

We originally found this idea on the Eighteen 25 website. We love their mood board, but we made some minor modifications to the one we built. These changes were mainly due to the materials we had on hand and because we like the idea of using a white board. Here’s what we used:

• A magnetic white board purchased from a local dollar store.
• Construction paper (you’ll need red, yellow, purple, green and blue to match the characters from the movie).
• Circular cake boards purchased from a local hobby store to serve as the backing for the character.
• Glue.
• Adhesive magnets to attach to the back of the emotions.

Who doesn’t love a ball pit? With the Feelings Ball Pit you can bring all the fun of a ball pit to older kids and teach them about their feelings at the same time. Depending on how you play, you can help kids to explore all five components of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

Supplies for Making a Feelings Ball Pit

• You will need standard ball pit balls. You can get them on Amazon, but they can be pricey. We got ours on the Wish app for significantly less (they took longer to get here, but it’s worth it for the savings if you plan ahead).
• Markers
• A container large enough to be the pit for the ball pit. It doesn’t have to be large enough that you can actually climb in (that would be fun), but it should be large enough to allow kids to dig through the balls.
• A set of our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards (for Versions #1 & #2 of the game below).
• A set of our Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards (for Versions #2 & #3 of the game below).
• A set of our I Feel Scenario Cards (for Version #3 of the game below)

Preparing the Game and Setting Up to Play

Whether you like writing or drawing or none of the above, a Feelings Journal is an extremely useful tool in learning how to cope with emotions. It is one of the most important thinking coping skills in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff Coping Tool Box and can also serve as a diversion tool or even a spiritual tool. Your journal is a space to record what’s going on in your life, and even more importantly the emotions that you are feeling. It can be as simple as a binder full of lined paper, a journal purchased from the store, or one you make on your own. The rest of this post describes how we made the journal shown in the pictures here.

Supplies

• A notebook filled with pages. We used a sketch book for our journal, but you may prefer lined paper.
• Markers
• Tissue paper
• Glue

Instructions

Shark Bite was one of the hottest games around this past Christmas. It was flying off the shelves and hard to get your hands on. It also seemed like the perfect game to help kids learn more about emotions. Before you can play though, you’ll have to drop a few buck on your own copy of the game. You can get it through Amazon here.

Playing Shark Bite

Shark Bite is a simple game to set up and to play. You put the fish in the mouth of the shark, then roll the dice and fish out the number of fish shown on the dice. The person who pulls the fish that causes the shark to bite loses, but really everyone wins in the fun game.

Modifying the Game to Play Shark Bite Feelings

If your kids are like mine, they like to look at themselves in the mirror. They like to make funny faces, and when they were younger it was uncommon to find them in the bathroom making themselves laugh by what they saw in the mirror. Mirror Mirror is a fun game that builds on that to help kids learn and practice what emotions look like. These are the important “See It” and “Mimic It” phases of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

Items Need to Play

You don’t need much to play this game. All you need is

• A mirror (one on the wall is fine for one child, but if you’re playing with a group you might want hand mirrors).
• A list of emotion words (our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards or the My Feelings Workbook are great if you need help.)

The Mood Meter is a fun craft to build and gives kids a chance to gauge how they’re feeling at any given moment, and over time. Your mood meter can be as simple or as involved as you want and is a nice alternative to a traditional emotion chart. We borrowed this wonderful idea from Education.com and encourage you to check out their website for more great ideas.

What Do You Need to Make a Mood Meter

Use your creativity to make your own personal mood meter. The following represents what we did:

• White poster board.
• Ruler
• Compass (helpful for getting your circle right)
• Construction Paper (you can match the emotions you are including in your charge, but you will definitely want a darker color to use for the arrow).
• A metal brad/fastener.
• Markers or crayons

The Color Wheel of Emotions provides kids and teens an artistic outlet for exploring their emotions. It also provides a golden opportunity to talk about those emotions with them. Although a simple exercise, the Color Wheel of Emotion hits on most of the aspects of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique – particularly the “Talk About It!” component. And, the best part is, you don’t even have to be a good artist to do it. The color wheel above was done by my (at the time) 13 year old daughter Lyndsey.

Supplies

• White piece of paper or poster board.
• Colored pencils, crayons or markers.

How to Make a Color Wheel of Emotions

A significant part of helping kids to deal with their emotions (Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up!) is helping them to develop a robust feelings vocabulary. That is why we are excited to present our very own set of Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards.

What Are Emotion Cards?

Each of these 54 cards includes the name of an emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Definition have been taken from, or adapted from entries in the WordNet® lexical database of English. The emotions included in this deck of feelings cards were extracted from our upcoming book 150 Emotions Every Kids Should Know – By Age (coming, hopefully, in late 2018).

How Do I Get These Cards?

Feelings Pictionary is a new take on an old game that help kids to learn about emotions while having fun at the same time. It’s a great game for small groups, schools or family game night. This game builds on the history of games like Pictionary; Win, Lose or Draw and Draw Something to create an environment where kids and adults can explore what emotions look like in all kinds of fun ways. All you need to play is two sets of cards that you can download here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids and something to draw on.

The Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards

The first set of cards you will need is our free Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards. Each of these 54 cards includes the name of a emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Unlike regular Pictionary where the drawer only needs to get their team to guess the object they are drawing, in Feelings Pictionary the teammates will have to guess both the object and the emotion shown on the Emotion Card.

The Feelings Pictionary Cards