Bottle Flip Emotions

If you’ve lived with, or been around, any elementary aged children at any point in the last year or so, you are likely familiar with the concept of the bottle flip. The bottle flip is where you take a bottle about a 1/4 full with water and try to flip it and have it land right side up. My own nine-year-old is a self-taught expert and can land a water bottle right side up on an exit sign from across the room.

We’ve taken the concept of the bottle flip and developed a game that helps kids to recognize and talk about emotions. Here’s how Bottle Flip Emotions work:

1. First, print out the pdf template of the game. You can find it by clicking here. It’s designed to be printed on 11 X 17 paper (or similar size). You can print it on smaller paper if you need to, but it will work better on larger sized papers.
2. Feel free to come up with your own method of playing. We play that if you don’t land the flip you have act out the emotion the bottle is pointing to (alternatives include having the child share a time they felt that emotion or a coping skill they can use to deal with the emotion). If the child lands the bottle, they do not have to act out or talk about the emotion.
3. Mix up how you play
   • Make the children stand across the room, or
   • Don’t let the remainder of the group (assuming you’re working with a group of kids) see the results. Have the child act out the emotion and have the other kids guess it.
   • Have two children flip the bottles. The first one to land a bottle wins and the other child has to act out the emotion that the bottle lands on.

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