Gauging Emotions With a Mood Meter

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

How to Make Your Mood Meter

• Decide on a “title” for your poster (we used “Today I Feel…”) and draw it on the top of the poster board.
• To use four emotions, draw a half circle using the compass. Divide that circle in half using the ruler, and then divide each half into halves.
• If you are including additional emotions, draw those in now.
• Use the drawing to cut the slices out of the construction paper and glue those slices on the poster board. Put your feelings in order of intensity or from pleasant to less pleasant emotions in order to use the meter as a gauge.
• Have the child write the names of each emotion inside the slice and draw a face representing the emotion. You may need to help with this step for younger kids.
• Cut an arrow from the black construction paper and attach it in the middle of the meter using the metal fastener.
• Have the child decorate their mood meter.
• Encourage the child to record where the currently fall on the mood meter and continue use it to understand their emotions better.

For more awesome resources for learning about and dealing with emotions, please visit our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotions Help Center.